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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
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SPEECHES   OF  A  VETERAN 
By  ELIOT    CALLENDER 


THE  BLUE  SKY   PRESS 
CHICAGO         MCMI 


Of  this  Book  there  have  been  twenty-five 
copies  printed  on  Van  Gelder  hand 
made  paper;  this  being  numder  V 


Privately  printed  for 
Eliot  Cal lender  by 
Langworthy  &  Stevens 


5 
l 


CIVIL  WAR  PAPERS 
NUMBER  ONE 


SOME  EARLY  DAYS  OF  THE 
REBELLION:  Delivered  before 
the  Farragut  Naval  Veterans'  As 
sociation,  Palmer  House,  Chicago, 
Illinois,  October,  1900. 


\ 

V! 


one  received  such  enduring  and  vivid 
'impressions  of  what  the  Rebellion  meant 
as  he  who  witnessed  its  beginnings  and 
^outbreak  in  the  Border  States.  In  the 
North  the  sentiment  was  pretty  much 
one  way,  and  in  the  extreme  South  it  was  altogether 
so,  but  in  the  Border  States  there  existed  an  atmos 
phere  unknown  to  either  the  North  or  the  South, 
both  politically  and  socially.  It  was  the  prize  ring 
in  which  the  contestants  were  soon  to  match  their 
strength  and  endurance,  and  the  preparations  for 
the  conflict  were  as  exciting  as  the  battles  themselves 
were.  The  situation  was  full  of  uncertainty,  sus 
picion  and  apprehension.  Life-long  friends  were 
friends  no  longer.  Slights  grew  into  insults,  and 
insults  rapidly  ripened  into  hatred;  boys  "scrapped" 
over  the  back  fence  while  their  fathers  passed  each 
other  with  a  sneer  on  the  sidewalk.  To  be  a  rebel 
was  bad;  to  be  a  Yank  was  worse,  while  both  sides 
visited  the  unfortunate  who  tried  to  carry  water  on 
both  shoulders,  as  a  traitor  and  a  sneak,  and  true 
to  nothing.  This  atmosphere  penetrated  even  the 
family  circle,  and  the  natural  love  between  brothers 
and  sisters  and  parents  and  children  was  turned  into 
the  bitterest  hatred. 

Such  were  the  early  days  of  1861  in  St.  Louis, 
where  the  writer,  the  son  of  a  slaveholder,  rapidly 
ran  through  the  scale  from  love  for  the  South  and 
its  institutions,  through  compromise  and  peace  at 
any  price,  up  to  the  time  he  promised  Uncle  Sam 
that  for  $13.00  a  month  he  would  undertake  to 
put  down  the  Rebellion,  single-handed  and  alone, 
if  necessary.  The  Germans  were  the  most  loyal 
of  the  population  of  that  city;  the  French  and  Irish 
the  most  disloyal, — an  index  finger  pointing  to  the 


world's  next  great  struggle  when  the  freedom-loving 
races,  made  up  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  German 
would  be  drawn  up  in  deadly  conflict  with  the  Latin 
and  Celt. 

The  municipal  campaign  that  year  gave  every 
opportunity  for  the  surcharged  feeling  which  was 
already  at  boiling  point.  On  more  than  one  oc 
casion  I  have  seen  antagonistic  political  organiza 
tions  panoplied  in  capes  and  caps,  and  armed  with 
torches,  meet  on  one  of  the  narrow  streets,  and  the 
efforts  which  each  side  made  to  beat  light  into  the 
heads  of  the  other,  made  a  harvest  for  the  small 
boy  in  gathering  up  the  debris  of  wrecked  torches 
and  torn  capes  and  caps. 

I  remember  well  one  night  when  Frank  P.  Blair, 
afterwards  a  Major-General  in  the  Union  Army, 
and  a  United  States  Senator,  attempted  to  speak 
at  a  political  rally  at  the  west  end  of  Lucas  Market 
Place;  his  well-turned  sentences  were  punctuated 
with  eggs  of  all  ages  and  conditions,  and  the  meet 
ing  resolved  itself  into  a  free-for-all  fight  in  which 
there  was  unanimity  of  feeling  on  but  one  point, 
and  that  was,  wherever  you  see  a  head,  hit  it. 

The  writer's  home  at  that  time  was  with  a  wealthy 
citizen  of  Republican  proclivities,  and  these  were 
so  well  known  that,  as  the  air  darkened  with  the 
oncoming  clouds  of  War,  threatenings  loud  and 
deep  were  made  not  only  against  his  person,  but 
against  his  property.  St.  Louis'  four  hundred  were 
forming  a  regiment  for  the  defense  of  the  sacred 
soil  of  Missouri,  and  to  resist  the  aggressions  of 
Federal  tyranny;  they  went  into  camp  on  the  out 
skirts  of  the  city,  where  they  were  daily  showered 
with  bouquets  and  kisses,  and  the  best  bands  in 
the  city  played  from  morning  until  night.  The 


intention  of  these  heroes  to  make  a  raid  through 
the  city  destroying  the  property  and  persons  of 
the  Yankees  was  in  no  wise  concealed,  and  the 
writer  well  remembers  four  boys  who  kept  watch 
and  ward  night  after  night,  in  the  third  story  of 
Hon.  John  Howe's  residence,  armed  with  shot 
guns,  rifles,  butcher  knives  and  tuning  forks. 
What  would  have  resulted  in  that  third  story  if  the 
Confederacy  had  made  a  raid  upon  it,  was  averted 
by  a  kindly  providence.  But  I  do  know  that  when 
ever  a  fresh  rumor  struck  our  ears,  a  fresh  load  went 
into  each  shot-gun,  until  it  was  far  more  certain  of 
death  in  the  rear  than  it  was  in  the  front.  But  be 
fore  we  were  called  upon  to  experiment  with  this 
amply-loaded  armament,  the  Germans  of  St.  Louis 
thought  that  the  silk  stockings  out  at  Camp  Jack 
son  had  had  most  fun  enough,  and  organized  a 
regiment  called  the  Schwartze-Jaegers,  and  under 
the  command  of  Frank  Blair  went  one  dark  night  in 
March  out  to  Camp  Jackson  and  routed  the  Con 
federacy,  foot,  horse,  and  dragon,  silk  stockings, tile 
hats  and  bouquets.  And  the  only  weapon  they 
appear  to  have  used  was  double-soled  boots,  which 
were  applied  with  such  impartiality  and  vigor  that 
I  never  knew  the  Confederacy  afterwards  to  sit 
down  in  St.  Louis. 

One  morning,  from  the  old  Berthold  mansion, 
corner  of  Fifth  and  Chestnut  streets,  a  yellow  flag 
with  the  state  arms  of  Missouri  was  seen  waving 
in  the  breeze.  The  excitement  was  tremendous. 
No  one  knew  exactly  what  the  flag  meant  or  was 
intended  to  represent,  but  it  evidently  breathed 
defiance  to  the  stars  and  stripes,  and  as  such  was 
cheered  by  the  Southerners  and  hissed  by  those 
who  believed  in  only  one  country  and  one  flag.  The 


excitement  increased  as  the  hours  of  the  day  wore 
on,  until  evening,  when  a  desperate  conflict  took 
place  in  front  of  the  house,  in  which  decorated  eyes 
and  sanguinary  noses  and  cracked  skulls  abounded. 
All  the  windows  in  the  house  were  smashed  in,  and 
under  the  leadership  of  some  enthusiastic  patriot, 
an  informal  call  was  made  upon  the  family,  which 
resulted  in  their  sliding  down  the  back  stairs,  while 
the  yellow  rag  was  dragged  from  its  place  and  torn 
into  shreds.  The  writer,  who  watched  this  scene 
from  the  protecting  rear  of  a  kindly-disposed  to 
bacco  store  Indian  on  the  other  side  of  the  street, 
never  remembers  his  heart  beating  more  tumult- 
ously,  unless  it  was  a  few  days  later  when  the  ob 
ject  of  his  affections,  who  was  wont  to  lavish  on  him 
a  whole  wealth  of  smiles  and  greetings,  turned  up 
her  petite  and  classical  little  nose,  and  alluded  to 
him  as  a  "mudsill"  and  "scum  of  the  earth"  and 
said  she  would  "not  have  anything  more  to  do  with 
such  truck  as  a  Yank."  , 

My  first  impressions  in  the  Navy  were  taken  in 
the  Army.  Very  few  of  you  sad  sea  dogs  partake  of 
my  amphibious  nature.  I  suppose  I  might  be  called 
a  web-footed  soldier.  My  first  naval  experience 
consisted  in  dropping  a  steamboat  one  iark  night 
from  St.  Louis  down  to  Carondelet,where  one  hun 
dred  or  more  employees  of  the  tan  yard  with  which 
I  was  connected,  loaded  the  contents  of  that  estab 
lishment,  raw,  wrought,  and  in  process  of  manu 
facture.  This  was  done  to  avoid  the  threatened 
destruction  of  the  premises  by  the  Southern  ele 
ment,  which  so  cordially  hated  my  Republican  em 
ployer.  The  stock  of  the  tan  yard  was  brought  up 
the  river  to  Peoria  where  it  was  finished  and  dis 
posed  of.  But  the  war  had  quite  a  start  by  that 


time,  and  I  felt  that  I,  personally,  had  a  score  to 
settle  with  the  Southern  sympathizers,  who  had 
already  robbed  me  of  my  girl  and  my  job. 

The  Eleventh  Illinois  Cavalry  was  forming  at 
Peoria,  with  that  redoubtable  warrior,  Col.  Robert 
G.  Ingersoll,  in  command.  I  was  given  a  gray  horse 
of  abnormal  proportions  and  a  backbone  that  would 
have  done  for  a  continental  divide;  it  was  riding 
this  horse  that  afterwards  drove  me  into  the  Navy. 
"Bob"  Ingersoll,  at  no  time  a  military  hero,  pos 
sessed  at  this  time  but  one  trait  in  that  line,  and 
that  was  a  love  for  the  cup  that  both  cheers  and 
inebriates.  He  ran  the  regiment  very  much  as  if 
it  were  a  circus,  and  the  more  fun  he  got  out  of  it 
the  greater  the  success  he  was  making.  Although 
a  boy  of  but  eighteen  years  of  age  at  the  time,  six 
weeks  observation  of  the  discipline,  or  the  lack  of 
it,  in  the  Illinois  nth  Cavalry,  made  me  hungry 
for  some  other  branch  of  the  service.  I  felt  that 
regiment  would  never  come  to  any  good  end  under 
its  leadership,  and  subsequent  events  proved  the 
truth  of  my  impressions. 

Being  well  acquainted  with  Col.  Ingersoll  social 
ly,  I  went  to  him  one  day  and  said,  "Colonel,  I 
believe  I  Would  like  to  get  into  the  United  States 
Navy."  He  answered  right  promptly,  "Callender, 
you  are  a  damn  fool."  Informing  him  that  I  was 
well  aware  of  the  fact,  I  told  him  that  my  father 
was  a  sea-faring  man,  and  the  hunger  I  had  for  the 
Navy  had  become  wellnigh  insupportable.  Look 
ing  me  straight  in  the  eye,  he  said,  "Do  you  mean 
it?"  I  said,  "I  do."  "Well,"  he  said,  "Go,  and 
be  damned  to  you";  and  I  went.  Although  mus 
tered  in,  I  left  that  night  for  St.  Louis  and  enlisted 
for  three  years,  or  during  the  War,  in  the  Missis- 


sippi  Squadron. 

The  Fremont  Gunboats,  as  they  were  then 
called,  were  being  built  at  St.  Louis,  five  of  them  I 
think,  under  the  superintendence  of  James  B.  Eads, 
the  celebrated  engineer.  The  style  of  architecture 
was  something  frightful  to  contemplate,  but  for 
all-around  boats  they  could  not  be  beaten.  They 
could  go  any  way,  forwards,  sideways,  or  backwards, 
with  equal  facility.  The  best  of  them,  (the  racer 
of  the  fleet)  once  made  two  miles  an  hour  going 
up  stream.  They  were  135  feet  long  and  50  feet 
beam,  and  were  essentially  of  the  mud  turtle  style 
of  architecture.  The  nautical  ability  of  Assistant 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  Fox,  John  C.  Fremont,  and 
General  Halleck  was  lavished  on  these  boats.  To 
be  sure,  none  of  these  gentlemen  had  ever  been 
accused  of  nautical  ability  prior  to  the  inception  of 
these  boats,  and  were  probably  quite  free  from  any 
such  imputation  afterwards.  James  B.  Eads  of  St. 
Louis,  the  engineer  who  afterwards  built  the  bridge 
and  the  jetties  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi, 
managed  to  save  these  boats  from  bfeing  simple 
floating  batteries.  They  were  really  quite  well 
adapted  for  the  purpose  for  which  they  were  in 
tended.  They  could  get  into  a  fight*  but  could 
not  get  out  of  it.  This  made  heroes  of  all  who 
served  on  them,  for  no  such  thing  as  retreat  was 
possible.  They  drew  but  six  feet  of  water,  and 
were  remarkably  free  from  all  causes  tending  to 
seasickness. 

The  Benton  was  the  largest  and  best  of  these 
boats,  and  was  named  after  the  famous  Missourian, 
Thomas  H.  Benton,  who  was  General  Fremont's 
father-in-law.  As  this  noble  craft  swung  out  into 
the  Mississippi  River  on  its  way  to  Cairo,  it  car- 


ried  a  distinguished  company  amongst  whom  were 
the  Assistant  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  General  Fre 
mont,  and  James  B.  Eads,  to  say  nothing  of  my 
self.  I  had  been  offered  the  position  of  landsman 
on  the  boat,  and  though  doubting  my  ability  to 
discharge  the  duties  pertaining  to  that  lucrative  and 
responsible  office,  I  felt  that  somehow  I  made  up 
in  loyalty  what  I  lacked  in  ability.  We  ran  onto 
so  many  bars  in  the  river  that  we  felt  no  need  of 
one  on  board,  and  if  we  accidently  missed  one  be 
tween  St.  Louis  and  Cairo,  it  was  compensated  for 
by  running  into  the  bank.  We  certainly  succeeded 
in  clearing  that  stretch  of  the  river  of  all  naviga 
tion  during  our  progress,  for  all  kinds  of  craft  had 
to  take  to  the  woods  or  get  run  over. 

It  was  a  momentous  day  when  the  five  gunboats, 
the  Benton,  Cincinnati,  St.  Louis,  Carondolet,  and 
Cairo,  lay  side  by  side,  moored  to  the  wharf  at  Cairo 
with  great  hawsers.  Five  hundred  real  and  alleged 
sailors  sat  upon  the  levy,  waiting  to  be  assigned  to 
the  different  boats.  There  were  men  there  who 
had  grown  gray  in  the  United  States  service,  and 
there  were  others  that  made  the  service  turn  gray 
through  their  ignorance.  There  were  men  there 
who  had  been  in  every  known  sea  on  the  globe  un 
der  the  old  flag;  there  were  others  whose  knowledge 
of  water  had  been  confined  to  some  period  in  their 
youth  when  they  had  been  forced  by  an  unfeeling 
parent  to  take  a  bath.  As  this  heterogenous  and 
motley  mass  were  waiting  to  be  divided  up,  there 
was  a  shout,  and  a  cry  of  "Look  there,  look  there." 
It  was  some  little  time  before  I  could  locate  the 
tumult,  then  I  observed  three  rats  running  along 
the  hawsers  from  the  gunboat  Cairo,  to  the  shore. 
I  thought  it  was  a  very  little  thing  to  create  such 


a  commotion  but  understood  better  a  little  later 
when  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  men  who 
were  drawn  off  for  the  Cairo  flatly  refused  to  go; 
expressions  that  they  would  rather  die  than  go  on 
that  boat,  being  frequent.  I  had  heard  before  of 
"rats  deserting  a  sinking  ship,"  but  never  quite  felt 
the  force  of  it  until  I  saw  that  same  gunboat  Cairo, 
early  in  the  rebellion,  blown  up  by  a  torpedo  in  the 
Yazoo  River,  sink  to  the  bottom  with  all  on  board. 
She  was  not  over  one  hundred  feet  from  the  boat 
on  which  I  was  signal  officer,  when  she  went  down. 
The  incident  of  that  afternoon  on  the  levy  at  Cairo 
came  upon  me  on  the  instant  with  such  force  that, 
while  I  do  not  claim  to  be  superstitious,  I  am  quite 
sure  I  would  rather  walk  even  now,  than  ride  in 
any  boat  which  I  had  seen  deserted  by  a  rat. 

The  Confederates  had  fortified  Columbus,  eight 
een  or  twenty  miles  below  Cairo,  and  as  the  river 
made  quite  an  abrupt  turn  here,  and  as  the  banks 
were  quite  precipitous  and  elevated,  a  very  few  guns 
made  a  very  formidable  obstruction,  especially  a 
plunging  shot  directed  at  boats  with  the  light  wood 
en  tops.  They  had  two  or  three  small  gunboats, — 
mere  river  craft  fixed  up  for  the  occasion.  One 
was  a  particularly  impertinent  and  saucy  fellow  that 
would  frequently  come  up  the  river  and  look  at 
matters  around  Cairo  from  a  distance  only  measured 
by  the  guns  on  the  fortifications.  The  Parrott  rifle, 
so  common  since,  was  new  then,  and  the  Benton 
had  one,  a  3  2 -pounder.  If  I  remember  rightly  the 
old  smooth  bores  could  not  be  relied  upon  for  over 
a  mile.  This  Parrot  would  carry  three. 

One  day  Commodore  Foote  started  out  on  a  little 
reconnaissance,  when,  on  turning  the  bend  below 
Cairo,  we  discovered  this  little  rebel  craft  out  on 


the  same  kind  of  an  expedition,  coming  up  the 
river;  she  was  fully  two  miles  from  us,  and  know 
ing  nothing  of  anything  save  the  smooth  bores,  she 
made  no  hurry  to  get  away.  Flag  officer  Foote 
called  up  Lieutenant  Bishop  who,  by  the  way, 
was  one  of  the  handsomest  young  naval  officers 
with  which  it  was  my  pleasure  to  become  ac 
quainted  in  the  service,  and  who  was  an  expert  shot 
with  heavy  guns,  and  said  to  him,  "Bishop,  do  you 
think  you  can  worry  that  little  fellow  with  your 
Parrott?"  "I  can  try,"  said  the  lieutenant,  who  went 
below,  and  in  a  few  minutes  the  Parrott  spoke  right 
out  in  meeting.  The  officers  all  watched  the  shot 
with  their  glasses,  when  to  their  delight  and  the 
consternation  of  the  Confederate  gunboat,  the  shot 
struck  the  water  apparently  not  fifty  feet  from  the 
boat,  and  for  aught  I  know  ricochetted  and  went 
right  through  her.  The  English  language  would 
have  to  be  beggared  for  adequate  words  to  describe 
the  way  in  which  that  little  boat  gathered  herself 
up  and  pulled  out  down  the  river.  They  probably 
had  a  darky  sitting  on  the  safety  valve,  and  fed  the 
furnace  with  coal  oil  or  anything  else  that  would 
help  hurry.  A  certain  Southern  congressman  who 
attempted  to  make  a  speech  after  fortifying  him 
self  with  several  cups  of  the  famous  cold  tea  that 
was  dispensed  in  a  restaurant  at  the  Capitol,  lost 
the  thread  of  his  argument,  and  after  talking  aim 
lessly  for  several  minutes,  stopped,  looked  hope 
lessly  around,  and  in  a  desperate  effort  to  save  him 
self,  called  out  "Mr.  Speaker,  where  are  we  at?" 
The  Mississippi  squadron,  during  the  first  year  of 
its  existence,  had  more  occasion  than  the  congress 
man  referred  to,  to  ask  this  question.  The  boats 
were  really  built  under  army  auspices,  with  old  Gid- 


eon  Wells,  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  acting  as  a 
kind  of  wet  nurse.  They  were  officered  in  part  by 
the  regular  Navy  appointments,  but  the  comple 
ment  was  made  out  from  those  who  had  taken  a 
regular  course  of  instruction,  and  had  won  diplomas 
as  farmers,  merchants  and  steamboat  men,  to  say 
nothing  of  myself,  who  graduated  from  a  tan  yard. 
General  Halleck  considered  them  a  part  of  his 
Western  Army  and  under  his  direct  orders. 

But  we  were  not  a  circumstance  compared  with 
Ellet's  Marine  Brigade  of  Rams,  which  was  organ 
ized  shortly  afterwards;  that  belonged  to  neither 
Army  nor  Navy,  and  defied  both  of  them.  In 
looking  back  at  it,  I  considered  at  that  time  that 
we  were  in  a  particularly  fortunate  position,  for  if 
the  Army  did  something  praiseworthy,  we  patted 
ourselves  on  the  back,  as  an  integral  portion  of  that 
organization.  If  the  glory  of  the  Navy  became 
ascendant,  we  strutted  around  with  our  thumbs  in 
our  armpits,  and  said,  "That's  us."  The  like  of 
the  drill  on  those  boats,  this  country  has  never  seen 
before  or  since.  It  was  an  impartial  conglomera 
tion  of  infantry,  artillery  and  naval  tactics,  spiced 
with  a  dash  of  marine  and  cavalry  manoeuvers.  We 
got  to  feel  that  we  were  particularly  well  equipped, 
all-around,  holy  terrors,  and  like  alligators,  quite 
at  home  afloat  or  ashore. 

But  in  all  the  motley  crowd  gathered  at  Cairo  in 
those  early  days,  we  certainly  constituted  the  four 
hundred,  and  this  reminds  me  of  a  large  party  given 
one  evening  by  a  daughter  of  a  leading  banker  of 
Cairo.  I  might  not  have  been  very  handy  at  that 
time  in  reefing  a  topsail  or  splicing  a  rope,  but  I 
was  at  home  in  three  or  four  different  languages  on 
the  waxed  floor,  and  was  happiest  in  the  society  of 


the  fair  sex.  At  this  party  mentioned,  there  was 
a  large  attendance  of  the  cream  of  Cairo  society, 
as  well  as  of  the  Army  and  Navy.  During  the 
height  of  the  festivities,  "when  eyes  looked  love 
to  eyes  that  spoke  again,  and  all  went  happy  as  a 
marriage  bell,"  I  noticed  an  officer,  rather  under 
sized,  who  instead  of  participating  in  the  festivities, 
looked  a  long  way  off  from  getting  his  money's 
worth,  as  he  stood  plastered  up  against  the  wall, 
with  an  expression  so  unhappy  and  out  of  place 
with  his  surroundings,  that  he  not  only  challenged 
my  attention,  but  exercised  my  sympathies.  "Who 
is  that  officer?"  I  asked  the  hostess.  She  said  it 
was  General  Grant.  He  had  just  at  that  time  been 
made  Brigadier  General,  and  looked  as  if  his  single 
star  had  stuck  to  his  stomach.  "Can  you  not  make 
him  dance,"  I  asked.  She  said,  "No,  he  has  de 
clined  all  overtures  in  that  direction."  I  imme 
diately  hunted  up  a  young  lady,  one  of  those  care 
less,  happy,  vivacious,  and  dare-devil  spirits  who 
was  up  to  anything  that  promised  amusement,  told 
her  of  my  intentions,  and  taking  her  up  to  the  Gen 
eral,  introduced  her,  with  the  request  that  he  fill 
up  one  of  the  sets  then  forming  on  the  floor.  He 
stammered  his  declination,  said  he  could  not  dance, 
was  doing  very  nicely  where  he  was,  but  while  doing 
so,  the  young  lady  had  hooked  onto  his  arm,  and 
assisted  by  me  with  the  other  arm,  he  was  out  on 
the  floor,  the  unhappiest  man  in  two  continents, 
and  fairly  launched  into  a  quadrille.  It  is  unneces 
sary  to  add  that  he  wandered  aimlessly  around 
through  the  quadrille,  stepping  on  everybody  else's 
feet,  and  running  over  the  ladies  on  the  corner,  and 
put  in  most  of  his  time  hunting  for  his  partner, 
while  the  bored  and  startled  expression  on  his  face 


would  have  stopped  a  clock.  But  his  partner,  every 
now  and  then  would  gather  him  up,  and  dance 
him  around  under  the  call  for  "All  promenade,"  and 
I  know  the  step  he  struck  was  never  described 
in  Hardee's  tactics.  She  finally  took  him  over  to 
his  place  against  the  wall  when  the  set  was  over, 
covered  with  perspiration  and  confusion,  and  he 
then  beat  a  hasty  retreat  from  the  room  just  as  soon 
as  his  partner's  back  was  turned. 

I  went  down  to  the  General's  cottage  at  Long 
Branch,  years  afterwards,  when  he  was  President  of 
the  United  States,  with  a  request  for  a  favor  for  a 
relative.  He  kindly  acceded  to  my  desire,  and 
gave  me  the  necessary  order.  He  then  asked  me 
where  he  had  seen  me  before.  I  recalled  the  epi 
sode  of  the  dance  at  Banker  Candee's  at  Cairo.  A 
quiet  smile  played  around  the  General's  mouth, 
and  he  sententiously  remarked,  "You  got  that  or 
der  just  in  time." 

And  now  I  will  close  this  desultory  rambling 
through  "Some  early  days  of  the  Rebellion"  with 
a  little  episode  of  personal  experience  which  shows 
how  early  in  life  your  true  naval  hero  indicates  the 
history-making  power. 

Having  risen  from  the  rank  of  landsman  to  the 
absorbing  and  responsible  position  of  Jack  of  the 
Dust,  I  felt  it  was  only  a  step  from  dealing  out 
rations  to  a  hungry  crew  to  the  position  of  line 
officer  with  all  the  shoulder  straps,  gold  lace,  but 
tons  and  other  accessories  pertaining  thereto.  I 
informed  Flag  Officer  Foote  as  delicately  as  I  could 
that  I  would  not  refuse  a  commission  as  Master's 
Mate  if  it  was  thrust  upon  me.  He  asked  if  I 
had  ever  had  any  sea  service,  and  I  told  him  I  had. 
He  then  asked  what  cruise  I  had  taken.  He  should 


not  have  pushed  the  matter  so  far,  for  I  was  then 
obliged  to  tell  him  that  I  had  gone  from  Boston 
to  Portland  one  night  on  a  steamer.  I  think  the 
laugh  the  Flag  Officer  indulged  in  upon  receipt  of 
this  information,  was  really  the  cause  of  my  getting 
the  commission. 

The  first  service  I  undertook  under  my  new 
rank  was  an  expedition  to  a  Jew  clothing  store  at 
Cairo,  where  I  gave  the  proprietor  carte  blanche 
for  a  uniform  that  would  contain  all  that  the  law 
allowed.  I  ordered  him  to  spare  nothing,  and  he 
did  not;  and  when  I  donned  that  toggery  a  couple 
of  days  afterwards,  I  had  to  look  at  it  through  a 
smoked  glass,  and  the  oil  lamps  with  which  the 
store  was  lighted  were  not  in  it  for  a  minute  with 
the  buttons  on  that  coat.  I  was  afraid  to  go  out 
on  the  street  very  suddenly  for  fear  I  would  par 
alyze  traffic. 

My  next  effort  for  my  country  consisted  in  be 
sieging  Captain  Pennock's  office  for  forty-eight 
hours  leave  of  absence  to  go  home  and  show  my 
clothes.  I  suppose  I  used  some  other  argument 
with  him,  but  it  was  in  disguise.  The  captain  had 
but  one  eye,  and  that  was  kindly  disposed,  and 
while  he  felt  that  the  service  needed  every  moment 
of  my  time,  under  the  pressing  circumstances  sur 
rounding  this  trip  to  Peoria,  he  felt  that  the  country 
ought  to  wait  and  let  me  go.  I  could  have  taken 
a  train  that  night  and  reached  Peoria  in  the  morn 
ing;  but  was  I  going  to  hide  that  uniform  on  a 
night  train?  Perish  the  thought! 

The  next  morning  found  me  seeking  access  to 
the  rear  car  on  the  train,  which  in  those  days  was 
always  the  ladies'  car.  No  one  in  the  service  was 
permitted  on  that  car  unless  accompanied  by  one 


of  the  other  sex.  But  you  will  all  understand  why 
it  was  impossible  for  me  to  ride  in  any  other  car 
under  the  circumstances.  The  brutal  brakeman 
who  stood  guard  at  the  door  refused  me  admission, 
when,  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  had  the  whole 
United  States  Navy  at  his  back,  as  well  as  on  his 
coat,  I  asked  him  if  he  did  not  permit  a  man  to 
ride  on  the  same  car  with  his  sister.  He  apolo 
gized  and  let  me  in. 

There  was  quite  a  number  of  people  in  the  car, 
mostly  ladies,  and  two  who  were  both  strikingly 
young  and  fair  to  look  upon  occupied  a  seat  pretty 
well  in  front.  That  was  the  neighborhood  I  felt 
called  upon  to  camp  in.  Taking  a  seat  on  the  other 
side  and  just  in  front  of  them,  I  stretched  my  arm 
with  its  gold  band  and  circle  of  big  buttons,  along 
the  back  of  the  seat,  and  saw  with  satisfaction  that 
the  young  ladies  were  not  only  all  eyes,  but  their 
mouths  were  opened  with  ill-concealed  wonder 
ment  and  admiration.  Navy  uniforms  were  very 
scarce  in  those  days,  and  few  persons  in  Illinois 
had  ever  seen  one.  This  helped  render  my  po 
sition  a  particularly  gratifying  one. 

While  in  the  seventh  heaven  of  happiness  over 
the  effect  of  my  presence  in  the  car,  a  tall  and 
stately  man  rose  from  the  rear,  and  walking  delib 
erately  forward,  faced  round  in  front  of  me  with 
what  was  intended  for  a  benevolent  smile.  Hamlet 
truly  says,  "A  man  may  smile  and  smile,  and  be 
a  villain,"  and  this  was  the  very  fellow.  He  spoke 
in  a  very  loud  tone  of  voice  so  that  everyone  in 
the  car  could  hear  him  and,  washing  his  hands  with 
imaginary  soap,  he  said,  "My  young  friend,  I  see 
you  belong  to  the  Navy."  The  young  ladies  op 
posite  were  now  all  ears,  and  in  a  lofty  manner  I 


condescendingly  informed  him  that  I  did.  I  felt 
that  I  had  the  honor  and  dignity  of  a  whole  branch 
of  the  service  to  maintain,  and  I  proposed  being 
equal  to  the  occasion.  "You  are  a  midshipman,  I 
see,"  he  said.  I  was  not,  but  I  could  not  help  but 
tell  him  I  was.  "What  state  were  you  appointed 
from  ?"  he  inquired  in  a  loud  tone  of  voice.  Feel 
ing  that  it  was  just  as  well  to  give  the  state  of  my 
present  residence  the  benefit  of  my  position,  I 
stated,  "Illinois."  He  said,  "I  knew  you  were  a 
midshipman  just  as  soon  as  you  entered  the  car; 
I  knew  it  from  your  uniform.  I  had  a  dear  brother 
once,"  he  said,  "who  was  a  midshipman."  He 
did  not  stop  to  wipe  away  a  tear,  but  he  ought  to 
have  done  so,  "and  when  he  was  obliged  to  wear 
a  coat  like  the  one  you  have  on,  he  was  at  once 
struck  with  the  peculiarity  of  that  row  of  buttons 
around  the  lower  part  of  the  sleeve.  He  did  not 
understand  why  those  buttons  should  have  been 
put  there,  as  whenever  he  tried  to  write  there  was 
always  a  big  button  between  him  and  the  table, 
which  wobbled  his  hand  from  one  side  to  the  other." 
Everybody  in  the  car  was  now  all  ears.  The 
situation  was  exciting,  and  up  to  this  point  was  one 
of  the  proudest  moments  of  my  life.  "After  de 
liberating,"  my  interlocutor  went  on,  "through  the 
whys  and  wherefores  of  those  button-bedecked 
sleeves,  he  went  to  the  president  of  the  Naval 
Academy  for  the  desired  information.  The  pres 
ident  received  him  kindly,  and  stated  he  was  pleased 
at  the  inquiring  turn  of  mind  which  my  brother 
exhibited,  and  stated,  'Those  buttons  were  put  on 
midshipmen's  sleeves  by  a  special  act  of  Congress, 
dated  December  i4th,  1842,  and  were  designed  to 
prevent  midshipmen  from  the  nefarious  practice  of 


wiping  their  noses  on  their  coat  sleeves.' ' 

A  shout  went  up  from  one  end  of  the  car  to  the 
other.  My  persecutor  vanished,  and  for  the  first 
time  I  realized  how  suffocatingly  hot  the  atmos 
phere  of  that  infernal  car  was.  I  gathered  up  my 
little  bundle  and  rode  the  rest  of  the  journey  in 
the  ordinary,  every  day  car,  along  with  the  common 
people. 


CIVIL  WAR  PAPERS 
NUMBER  TWO 


WHAT  A  BOY  SAW  ON  THE 
MISSISSIPPI:  Given  by  Eliot 
Callender  at  Kinsley's,  Chicago, 
Illinois,  October,  1889. 


,HEN  the  dark  clouds  of  war  rolled  up 
on  the  hitherto  peaceful  horizon  of  our 
beloved  land,  when  men  were  saying 
"What  does  all  this  mean,  and  how  will 
it  end,"  two  great  minds,  at  least, 
grasped  the  situation  and  decided  that  it  meant  busi 
ness"  and  was  going  to  end  in  a  heap  of  unpleas 
antness.  These  two  minds  also  met  on  another 
point,  and  that  was,  the  value  of  the  great  Missis 
sippi  River,  and  the  necessity  of  opening  it,  and 
keeping  it  open.  With  these  minds,  to  conceive 
was  to  act,  and  Abraham  Lincoln  ordered  a  fleet 
of  gunboats  built  at  once,  whilst  your  humble  serv 
ant,  working  at  the  other  end  of  the  line,  promptly 
accepted  the  responsible  and  lucrative  position  of 
ordinary  seaman  on  one  of  them.  Everything  be 
ing  now  in  readiness,  the  war  began. 

The  first  iron-clad  gunboats  on  the  Mississippi 
were  fearfully  and  wonderfully  made.  General  John 
C.  Fremont,  James  B.  Eads,  of  St.  Louis,  General 
Halleck  and  Assistant  Secretary  of  the  Navy  Fox, 
all  had  a  hand  in  them.  To  be  sure,  none  of  the 
worthy  gentlemen  had  ever  seen  a  gunboat  before, 
but  what  of  that, — they  had  no  mossgrown  theories 
to  overcome,  and  the  result  of  their  joint  labors 
was  a  "what  is  it,"  the  like  of  which  the  world 
never  saw  before,  and  the  plates  being  destroyed, 
no  more  copies  can  be  furnished.  They  could  go 
anywhere  that  the  current  went,  and  the  current  is 
pretty  swift  in  that  river.  The  racer  of  that  fleet 
in  an  exciting  struggle,  made  two  miles  an  hour 
upstream,  and  then  tied  up  to  the  bank  till  the  less 
gifted  boats  caught  up  with  her; — what  they  lacked 
in  speed,  however,was  more  than  made  up  in  style. 
Of  the  mud-turtle  school  of  architecture,  with  just 


a  dash  of  pollywog  treatment  in  the  way  of  relief, 
they  struck  terror  to  every  guilty  soul  as  they 
floated  down  the  river, — especially  when  it  was 
found  they  were  loaded. 

Commodore  (afterwards  Rear  Admiral)  A.  H. 
Foote  was  sent  West  to  command  the  Mississippi 
Squadron.  He  was  the  first  general  officer  of  the 
war  that  I  came  in  contact  with,  and  none  made  a 
more  lasting  impression.  I  can  see  him  now,  as  I 
saw  him  when  I  stood  before  him  trying  to  con 
vince  him  that  my  career  in  a  tan  yard  had  emi 
nently  fitted  me  for  a  commission  in  the  U.  S.  Navy, 
and  the  same  quiet  smile  that  played  over  his  patient 
but  strong  features  as  he  declined  my  request  played 
there  again  at  Fort  Henry  when  he  ordered  the  Cin 
cinnati,  his  flagship,  up  to  within  one  hundred  yards 
of  the  Fort, — though  at  twelve  hundred  yards  her 
decks  were  slippery  with  blood,  and  the  cries  of  the 
wounded  frequently  drowned  the  noise  of  battle. 

A  good  many  of  us,  my  friends,  have  proved 
that  the  courage  which  availed  us  on  the  field  of 
battle,  deserted  us  in  the  hour  of  temptation  and 
moral  danger.  Admiral  Foote  was  a  hero  always; 
a  quiet,  unassuming  gentleman,  but  one  who  feared 
nothing  but  his  God;  his  duty  as  he  saw  it,  marked 
the  path  in  which  he  trod.  At  Cairo,  one  Sunday 
morning  in  the  closing  days  of  1861,  two  or  three 
hundred  were  gathered  together  in  the  leading 
church  of  that  town.  The  hour  of  service  arrived 
and  passed  and  no  steps  were  taken  toward  a  com 
mencement;  at  length  one  of  the  officers  of  the 
church  arose  in  his  seat,  and  stated  that  for  some 
unknown  cause  the  minister  had  failed  to  arrive, 
and  the  audience  would  be  dismissed  unless  it  con 
tained  some  one  who  would  kindly  lead  the  service. 


A  pause, — and  Admiral  Foote  arose  and  taking  off 
his  overcoat  as  he  walked  up  the  aisle,  ascended 
the  pulpit  and  gave  out  a  hymn,  led  in  prayer,  and 
finally  gave  us  a  discourse  of  half  an  hour  that 
would  have  done  credit  to  any  divine.  A  strict 
disciplinarian,  his  ear  was  open  to  every  appeal,  and 
justice  was  meted  out  in  the  Mississippi  Squadron 
without  fear  or  favor.  We  all  felt  the  prevailing 
force  of  a  master  mind,  and  all  respected  and 
loved  it. 

The  first  battle  in  the  world's  history  where  iron 
clad  vessels  were  used  in  the  offensive,  occurred  at 
Fort  Henry  February  6th,  1862.  England  and 
Germany  both  had  representatives  on  the  scene  of 
battle  within  ten  days  time,  and  received  exhaustive 
reports  as  to  the  effect  of  shot  and  shell  on  the  iron 
clad  armor,  the  weight  and  size  of  the.  guns  used 
on  both  sides,  the  range  and  distances,  and  every 
detail  of  the  action. 

It  was  purely  a  naval  engagement  on  our  side, — 
the  advance  of  General  Grant's  cavalry  galloping 
into  the  fort  fully  forty  minutes  after  the  Confed 
erate  flag  was  lowered  and  while  General  Floyd  B. 
Tighlman  was  on  the  "Cincinnati"  tendering  his 
sword  to  Admiral  Foote. 

Had  not  such  a  miscalculation  as  to  the  time  it 
would  take  for  the  army  to  reach  the  twelve-mile 
road  running  from  Fort  Henry  on  the  Tennessee 
to  Fort  Donelson  on  the  Cumberland  occurred, 
the  entire  force  of  the  enemy  in  Fort  Henry  con 
sisting  of  the  better  part  of  a  brigade,  would  have 
been  captured;  but  this  did  not  seem  to  worry 
General  Grant  much  for,  satisfied  that  they  were 
safe  in  Donelson,  he  gathered  them  in  together 
with  an  entire  army  about  ten  days  later. 


An  interesting  incident  (and  one  which  has  never 
seen  print)  occurred  the  evening  before  the  battle: 
Generals  Grant,  McClernand,  Smith  and  another 
officer  whose  name  escapes  me,  came  aboard  the 
"Cincinnati"  about  dusk  to  hold  a  conference  with 
the  Admiral  and  arrange  a  program  for  the  as 
sault  on  the  fort  the  next  day.  While  they  were 
in  the  cabin,  the  wooden  gunboat  "Conestoga," 
under  the  command  of  Lieutenant  (now  Cap 
tain)  Seffridge,  which  had  been  ordered  on  a  re- 
connoitering  expedition  up  the  river  to  ascertain 
if  the  channel  was  clear  of  obstructions,  dropped 
alongside  of  the  flagship  and  unloaded  a  huge  tor 
pedo  which  she  had  pulled  out  of  the  river  above, 
on  the  Cincinnati's  fantail.  The  fantail  of  these 
ironclads  was  a  space  at  the  stern  of  the  boat  near 
the  water  edge,  running  the  width  of  the  boat  and 
about  fifteen  feet  deep;  across  it  worked  the  steer 
ing  apparatus  connected  with  the  rudders.  From 
the  extreme  end  of  the  fantail  arose  the  iron  end 
of  the  sun  decks  about  ten  feet  high  on  an  inclined 
plane,  which  was  ascended  by  an  ordinary  ship  lad 
der.  The  conference  being  over,  the  army  officers, 
accompanied  by  the  Admiral,  came  down  this  lad 
der  to  the  fantail,  and  were  about  embarking  on 
the  row-boat  with  which  they  had  reached  the  flag 
ship,  when  their  attention  was  attracted  to  the  tor 
pedo  which  lay  at  their  feet.  They  gathered  around 
it  with  expressions  of  interest  and  curiosity  as  it 
was  the  first  seen  in  the  war.  It  was  a  formidable 
affair,  being  an  iron  cylinder  about  five  feet  long 
and  eighteen  inches  in  diameter,  pointed  at  both 
ends,  with  a  long  iron  rod  projecting  upward,  ter 
minating  at  one  end  in  three  iron  prongs  to  catch 
the  bottom  of  the  boat  passing  over  it  and  con- 


nected  at  the  other  end  with  an  ordinary  musket 
lock  which  was  fixed  to  explode  a  cap.  General 
Grant  expressing  a  wish  to  see  the  mechanism  of 
the  affair,  the  ship  armorer  was  sent  for,  who  soon 
appeared  with  monkey  wrench,  hammer  and  chis 
els.  The  iron  end  was  loosened  and  removed, 
disclosing  another  end  in  a  cap  with  a  screw  head. 
It  was  now  getting  interesting  and  the  assembled 
officers  bent  closely  over  it  in  order  to  get  a  better 
view  of  the  infernal  contrivance.  As  this  cap  was 
unscrewed  it  allowed  vent  to  a  quantity  of  gas  in 
side, — probably  generated  from  wet  powder;  it 
rushed  out  with  a  loud  sizzing  noise.  Believing 
that  the  hour  for  evening  prayer  had  arrived,  two 
of  the  army  officers  threw  themselves  face  down 
upon  the  deck.  Admiral  Foote,  with  the  agility 
of  a  cat  sprang  up  the  ship's  ladder  followed 
with  commendable  enthusiasm  by  General  Grant. 
Reaching  the  top,  and  realizing  that  the  danger,  if 
any,  had  passed,  the  Admiral  turned  to  General 
Grant,  who  was  displaying  more  energy  than  grace 
in  his  first  efforts  on  a  ship's  ladder,  and  said  with 
his  quiet  smile,  "General,  why  this  haste?"  "That 
the  Navy  may  not  get  ahead  of  us,"  as  quietly  re 
sponded  the  General  as  he  turned  around  to  come 
down.  A  hearty  laugh  was  now  in  order  and  was 
indulged  in  by  all  hands.  The  armorer  proceeded 
with  his  work  and  the  dissection  was  completed. 
The  thought  has  come  to  me  more  than  once  in 
these  latter  days,  how  the  explosion  of  that  torpedo 
that  evening  might  have  changed  the  entire  history 
of  the  war. 

After  the  capture  of  Forts  Henry  and  Donelson 
the  Confederate  line  was  forced  south  of  Nashville. 
Columbus  on  the  Mississippi,  though  strongly  for- 


tified,  was  evacuated,  and  the  Mississippi  squadron 
found  itself  resisted  at  Island  No.  10.  General 
Pope  was  at  New  Madrid  Mission,  two  miles  be 
low  the  Island,  but  not  able  to  cross  the  river  and 
attack  the  Confederate  works  in  the  rear,  owing  to 
a  lack  of  transportation,  and  the  assiduous  atten 
tions  of  these  Confederate  gunboats.  Our  fleet 
was  held  three  miles  above  the  island  by  strong 
earthworks,  which  not  only  lined  the  entire  left 
side  of  the  island  looking  down  the  river,  but  also 
the  Tennessee  shore  above.  The  river  here  makes 
a  sharp  bend  and  again  below  at  New  Madrid, — 
the  island  occupying  nearly  the  entire  length  of 
the  bend  from  north  to  south.  The  Missouri  shore 
from  our  anchorage  to  General  Pope's  headquart 
ers  was  one  vast  swamp,  impassable  to  boat  or  beast. 
General  Pope  urged  the  Admiral  to  run  the  block 
ade  with  his  fleet,  but  the  Admiral,  knowing  the 
enemy  had  a  fleet  nearly  as  strong  as  his  own  which 
in  case  of  disaster  to  him  might  lay  every  town  on 
the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  under  tribute  at  will,  did 
not  deem  it  wise  to  venture  all  on  a  single  cast  of 
the  die,  but  expressed  his  willingness  for  'one  of  the 
boats  to  make  the  attempt.  Every  vessel  in  the 
fleet  applied  for  the  coveted  honor,  but  the  "Car- 
ondelet,"  Commander  Henry  Walke,  was  selected, 
and  active  preparations  made  for  the  attempt.  A 
long  barge  loaded  with  baled  hay  was  lashed  to  the 
port  side  of  the  boat;  her  guns  run  in  and  made 
fast,  and  the  first  dark  night  determined  upon  for 
the  effort.  We  had  not  long  to  wait, — about  9 
o'clock  at  night  on  the  4th  of  April,  1 862,  a  furious 
thunder  storm  came  up;  the  sky  was  inky  black, — 
a  darkness  that  could  be  almost  felt;  and  when 
every  now  and  then,  a  vivid  flash  of  lightning  rent 


the  heavens  it  but  served  to  make  the  midnight 
darkness  that  swallowed  it  up  all  the  denser;  a  sul 
try,  sullen  silence,  broken  only  by  the  distant  de 
tonations  of  thunder,  cast  a  weird  and  ominous 
spell  that  could  be  better  felt  than  described.  Ev 
erything  being  in  readiness,  the  "Carondelet" 
slipped  her  cable  and  slowly  glided  out  into  the 
inky  darkness.  Her  fires  were  banked,  her  lights 
put  out,  and  a  low  head  of  steam  kept,  that  the 
noise  of  the  exhaust  might  be  as  faint  as  possible. 
A  half  an  hour, — and  she  was  just  passing  the  up 
per  batteries  on  the  main  shore  and  heading  down 
the  schute  past  the  island,  when  one  of  the  most 
vivid  and  protracted  sheets  of  lightning  I  ever  wit 
nessed,  made  everything  as  bright  as  day.  The 
crash  of  thunder  that  followed  was  succeeded  by  just 
one  moment  of  unearthly  calm  when,  as  if  fired  by 
electricity,  forty -two  pieces  of  siege  artillery  rained 
a  storm  of  shot  and  shell  at  that  devoted  boat; 
but  the  guns  had  been  trained  for  a  longer  range 
than  such  an  emergency  called  for,  and  not  one 
shot  struck  the  gallant  boat  as  she  silently  and 
steadily  glided  on,  pointing  directly  for  the  head  of 
the  island,  as  the  channel  passed  very  close  to  that 
shore.  When  she  received  the  second  discharge 
she  was  near  enough  to  the  batteries  on  the  upper 
end  of  the  island  to  hear  the  hurried  exclamations 
of  the  men  in  the  fort,  and  every  word  of  command. 
Another  flash  of  lightning  betrayed  her  where 
abouts,  but  so  close  was  she  to  the  batteries  that 
it  was  next  to  impossible  for  the  enemy  to  depress 
their  guns  sufficiently;  but  the  atmosphere  was 
badly  cut  up  and  the  trees  on  the  other  side  of  the 
river  had  a  sorry  time  of  it.  Curses  and  yells  were 
heard  from  the  island  as  the  frantic  Confederates 


rushed  hither  and  yon.  The  flash  and  roar  of  artil 
lery  discharges,  drowned  as  they  all  were  every  now 
and  then  by  vivid  lightning  and  deafening  reveb- 
erations  of  Heaven's  artillery,  made  up  a  scene  and 
an  event  that  years  will  never  efface  from  the  mem 
ory  of  those  that  witnessed  it. 

Nor  was  the  battle  yet  ended;  anchored  in  the 
stream  abreast  the  lower  fort  was  a  formidable  float 
ing  battery  upon  which  the  enemy  had  built  great 
hopes — "Capable  of  destroying  anything  the  Yan 
kees  have  got  afloat,"  was  the  verdict  when  the 
craft  was  completed.  She  lay  almost  directly  in 
the  channel  and  the  "Carondelet"  nearly  ran  her 
down  in  her  career,  but  so  demoralized  were  her 
defenders  by  this  unlooked-for  midnight  race  that 
they  fired  just  one  broadside  at  random,  and  sought 
refuge  in  the  river.  And  now  another  sound  rends 
the  midnight  air,  a  sound,  my  friends,  familiar  to 
us  all  in  the  days  long  gone  by,  a  sound  that  could 
not  come  too  often,  that  cheered  and  strengthened 
when  all  other  things  failed,  the  honest,  whole- 
souled  Union  cheer  of  victory.  It  came  surging 
through  the  night  air  from  twenty  thousand  of  Gen 
eral  Pope's  brave  boys  occupying  reserved  seats 
along  the  river  banks  for  this  long-looked-for  en 
tertainment. 

Morning  light  found  the  "Carondelet"  in  hot 
pursuit  of  the  Confederate  gunboats  below  New 
Madrid.  Sunday,  the  6th,  with  General  Gordon 
Granger  and  other  officers  as  spectators  on  board, 
she  destroyed  a  battery  opposite  Point  Pleasant, 
spiking  the  guns.  The  night  of  the  yth,  taking 
advantage  of  another  storm,  the  gunboat  "Pitts- 
burg"  ran  the  batteries,  and  the  afternoon  of  that 
day  the  garrison  of  Island  No.  10  surrendered  to 


Admiral  Foote,  the  same  day  as  the  battle  of  Shiloh. 
At  4  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  8th,  the  retreat 
ing  army  of  the  Confederates  fell  into  General 
Pope's  fond  embrace.  The  direct  result  of  this 
dare-devil  act  of  Commander  Walke  and  his  gal 
lant  crew  being  the  capture  of  five  thousand  pris 
oners,  three  general  officers  and  an  imense  amount 
of  ammunition  and  provisions. 

Again  the  confederate  lines  were  pushed  south, 
and  nearly  one  hundred  miles  more  of  the  Miss 
issippi  River  were  reluctantly  surrendered  to  the 
power  of  the  Federal  Union.  The  Mocking  Birds 
who  had  for  a  year  been  practicing  on  the  strains 
of  Dixie,  were  obliged  to  take  up  a  new  tune.  The 
tune  that  led  our  forefathers  on  many  a  hard-fought 
field,  was  now  for  the  first  time  in  many  months 
waking  the  echoes  of  the  Mississippi.  Yankee 
Doodle  may  not  rank  high  in  classical  music,  my 
friends,  but  "it  gets  there  just  the  same." 

And  now  Fort  Pillow,  ninety  miles  above  Mem 
phis,  with  its  steep,  red  clay  bluffs  165  feet  high, 
with  General  Beauregard  and  eighteen  thousand 
Confederate  troops  and  seventy  pieces  of  siege  ar 
tillery,  said,  "So  far  and  no  farther,"  to  our  ad 
vancing  Mississippi  squadron;  and  as  we  are  now 
on  the  eve  of  the  two  great  struggles  for  supremacy 
between  naval  forces  north  and  south,  operating 
in  the  west,  I  will  leave  you  anchored  about  five 
miles  above  the  fort,  while  we  take  a  hasty  look  at 
the  bill  of  fare  prepared  by  our  Southern  friends 
for  our  reception. 

At  the  very  outbreak  of  the  Rebellion,  the  enemy 
started  the  keels  of  four  formidable  men-of-war  for 
use  on  the  Mississippi,  two  being  built  at  New 
Orleans  and  two  at  Memphis.  The  first  two,  Ad- 


miral  Farragut  heard  from,  and  I  may  also  add 
that  they  heard  from  him;  of  the  other  two,  one 
we  destroyed  on  the  stocks  at  Memphis,  the  "S. 
B.  Mallory,"  but  the  other,  the  "Arkansas,"  was 
towed  down  the  river  before  the  advance  of  our 
squadron,  and  lived  to  do  us  much  harm  before 
her  destruction. 

Commodore  Edward  Montgomery,  C.  S.  N., 
under  a  carte  blanche  from  the  Citizens'  Defense 
Association  of  New  Orleans,  seized  ocean  steam 
ships,  gulf  tow-boats,  and  river  steamers  and  went 
to  work  with  a  right  good  will  to  get  up  a  navy. 
The  result  was  the  "General  Bragg,"  a  large  gulf 
steamer  carrying  two  guns  but  fitted  up  mainly  as 
a  ram,  the  "Sumpter"  and  "General  Price,"  gulf 
tow-boats  with  engines  of  great  power  converted 
into  rams,  the  "Little  Rebel,"  "General  Beaure- 
gard,"  "General  Lovell,"  "General  Van  Dorn," 
"General  Polk,"  and  the  "Livingston."  These 
boats  cost  the  Citizens'  Association  nearly  two  mil 
lions,  which  amount  the  Confederate  Government 
agreed  to  repay  provided  Commodore  Montgom 
ery  fought  the  Federal  fleet  above  Memphis.  This 
will  account  for  the  events  now  about  to  be  nar 
rated. 

All  of  these  boats  had  great  speed,  walking  beam 
engines,  solid  bows  with  iron  beaks,  but  used  cot 
ton  bales  where  we  used  iron  and  relied  on  sinking 
their  opponents  by  ramming  rather  than  by  guns; 
while  we  had  the  superiority  in  weight  and  metal, 
they  had  advantage  in  every  other  particular.  Not 
one  of  our  boats  could  back  upstream,  they  were 
not  built  that  way;  they  were  really  floating  bat 
teries.  Now  the  advantage  possessed  by  the  enemy 
can  be  readily  seen  from  the  fact  that  he  was  fight- 


ing  upstream  with  powerful  and  easily  handled 
boats,  while  we  were  fighting  down  stream  with 
boats  that  could  not  be  handled  at  all.  In  an  ac 
tion,  were  one  of  his  boats  disabled,  it  drifted  down 
stream  into  the  hands  of  friends;  were  one  of  our 
boats  crippled,  the  same  current  carried  us  quickly 
where  there  was  "no  one  to  love,  none  to  caress," 
but  where  speedy  connections  could  be  made  with 
either  the  bottom  of  the  river  or  Andersonville,  or 
or  both. 

Admiral  Foote  never  recovered  from  the  wound 
he  received  in  the  pilot  house  of  the  "Benton"  at 
Fort  Donelson;  he  left  the  Mississippi  Squadron 
early  in  May  to  die  at  his  home  in  the  east.  Flag 
officer  Charles  H.  Davis  had  assumed  command, 
and  early  discovered  the  wild  and  woolly  west  to  be 
pretty  full  of  business.  He  found  his  fleet  at  Fort 
Pillow  and  had  not  had  time  to  inspect  the  eight 
boats  under  his  command,  when  he  awoke  the 
morning  of  the  loth  of  May,  1862,  to  find  a  mat 
inee  of  first-class  proportions  on  his  hands. 

I  have  stated  that  the  fleet  lay  at  anchor  five 
miles  above  the  fort  awaiting  a  movement  of  our 
army  which  they  expected  to  co-operate,  but  that 
General  Beauregard  might  not  forget  that  there  was 
a  God  in  Israel,  a  mortar-boat,  throwing  a  shell 
thirty-nine  inches  in  circumference,  was  made  fast 
to  the  shore  just  above  the  point  behind  which  the 
fort  lay,  and  every  half  hour  during  the  day  one  of 
these  little  pills  would  climb  a  mile  or  two  in  the 
air,  look  around  a  bit  at  the  scenery,  and  finally 
disintegrate  around  the  fort,  to  the  great  interest 
and  excitement  of  the  occupants.  One  of  the  gun 
boats  would  drop  down  every  night  and  stand  a 
twenty-four  hour  watch  over  this  mortar  boat. 


On  this  memorable  morning,  the  "Cincinnati's" 
Commander,  Stembel,  was  lying  just  above  the 
mortar,  made  fast  to  the  trees  and  with  steam  down, 
holy-stoning  decks.  It  was  a  beautiful  morning, 
like  one  of  those  June  days  which  so  often  bless 
our  northern  latitudes;  Nature  had  put  on  her  lov- 
liest  garb;  the  woods  were  vocal  with  songsters  and 
the  entire  surroundings  seemed  so  appropriate  for 
a  young  man  who  had  left  his  girl  behind  him  to 
indite  her  a  few  words,  that  one  young  man  at  least 
on  the  "Cincinnati"  that  morning  was  engaged  in 
that  very  occupation.  While  deep  in  logical  argu 
ment  proving  that  beyond  question  the  stars  paled 
whenever  she  stepped  out  of  an  evening,  the  hur 
ried  shuffle  of  steps  on  the  deck  overhead,  the 
short,  sharp  command  to  call  all  hands  to  quarters, 
caused  the  writer  to  drop  his  pen  and  climb  the 
companionway.  The  sight  which  met  his  youth 
ful  eyes  will  never  be  effaced;  steaming  rapidly 
around  the  point  below  us,  pouring  dense  clouds 
from  their  funnels,  came  first  one,  then  two,  then 
more,  until  six  war  vessels  under  full  head  of  steam, 
came  surging  up  the  river  barely  a  mile  below  us; 
eight  minutes  would  bring  them  alongside,  while 
the  "Cincinnati,"  with  barely  steam  enough  to  turn 
her  wheel  over,  lay  three  miles  from  the  rest  of  the 
Union  fleet,  not  one  boat  of  which  had  steam 
enough  to  hold  itself  against  the  current. 

The  enemy's  plan  was,  undoubtedly,  to  surprise 
(and  I  may  state  right  here  that  they  did)  the  gun 
boat  that  protected  the  mortar,  sink  or  capture  her, 
destroy  the  mortar  and  get  back  under  cover  of  the 
guns  of  the  fort  before  the  Union  fleet  above  could 
come  to  the  rescue;  the  plan  came  very  near  be 
ing  successful. 


The  "Cincinnati's"  cables  were  slipped  and  slow 
ly  she  swung  out  into  the  stream.  Her  engineers 
were  throwing  oil  and  everything  else  inflammable 
into  her  fires  that  the  necessary  head  of  steam  might 
be  obtained  to  handle  the  boat.  On  came  the 
leader  of  the  Confederate  fleet,  the  "General  Bragg," 
a  powerful  gulf  steamer,  built  up  full  in  the  bow 
and  standing  up  twenty  feet  above  the  surface  of 
the  river.  Her  powerful  engines  were  plowing  her 
along  at  a  rate  that  raised  a  billow  ten  feet  high  at 
her  bow  at  a  clean-cut  right  angle.  At  a  dis 
tance  of  not  over  fifty  yards  she  received  our  full 
starboard  battery  of  four  thirty-two  pound  guns; 
cotton  bales  were  seen  to  tumble  and  splinters  fly, 
but  on  she  came,  her  great  walking  beam  engine 
driving  her  at  a  fearful  rate.  When  less  than  fifty 
feet  away,  the  "Cincinnati's"  bow  was  thrown 
around  and  the  two  boats  came  together  with  a 
fearful  crash,  but  it  was  a  glancing  blow  that  the 
"General  Bragg"  secured  and  not  the  one  she  in 
tended;  a  right-angle  contact  would  have  sunk  us 
then  and  there,  but  glancing  blow  as  it  was,  it  took 
a  piece  out  of  our  midships  six  feet  deep  and  twelve 
feet  long,  throwing  the  magazine  open  to  the  in 
flow  of  the  water  and  knocking  everything  down 
from  one  end  of  the  boat  to  the  other.  The  force 
of  the  blow  fastened  the  "Bragg's"  ram  temporarily 
in  the  "Cincinnati's"  hull.  "Give  her  another 
broadside,  boys"  passed  the  word  of  command. 
The  men  sprang  with  a  cheer  to  their  guns  and 
the  entire  broadside  was  emptied  into  the  "Bragg" 
at  such  close  range  that  the  guns  could  not  be  run 
out  of  the  ports;  it  is  unnecessary  to  add  that  this 
broadside  settled  the  "Bragg,"  for  she  lay  careened 
up  against  us  so  that  it  tore  an  immense  hole  in 


her  from  side  to  side.  She  slowly  swung  off  from 
the  "Cincinnati,"  and  as  the  command  was  given 
to  "board  the  enemy"  she  lowered  her  flag. 

But  it  is  doubtful  how  much  "boarding"  we 
could  have  done,  for  just  at  this  moment  the  sec 
ond  Confederate  ram,  the  "Sumpter,"  reached  the 
scene  of  action,  and  coming  up  under  full  head  of 
steam,  struck  the  "Cincinnati"  in  the  fantail,  cut 
ting  into  her,  three  feet,  destroying  her  rudders  and 
steering  apparatus,  and  letting  the  water  pour  into 
the  hull  of  the  boat.  Before  she  struck  us,  how 
ever,  our  stern  battery  of  two  six-inch  guns  got 
two  broadsides  into  her. 

And  now  came  up  the  third  Confederate  ram, 
the  "General  Lovell,"  aiming  for  our  port  quarter. 
"Haul  down  your  flag,  Yanks,  and  we  will  save 
you,"  yelled  someone  when  she  was  less  than  fifty 
feet  away.  "Our  flag  will  go  down  when  we  do," 
was  the  response.  We  got  but  one  gun  to  bear 
on  her  before  the  crash  came;  the  "Cincinnati" 
was  raised  enough  by  the  force  of  the  blow  to  throw 
her  bows  under.  The  water  was  pouring  in  from 
three  directions;  the  engineers  were  standing  waist 
deep  in  the  engine  room;  the  fires  were  being  rap 
idly  extinguished;  we  had  just  one  more  round  of 
amunition  in  the  guns,  the  magazine  being  flooded. 
The  "General  Lovell"  was  filled  with  sharpshoot 
ers  who  had  picked  off  every  exposed  man,  includ 
ing  Commander  Stembel  who  fell  with  a  minie 
bullet  through  his  mouth.  First  Master  Hoel 
who  assumed  command,  came  down  on  the  gun- 
deck  and  called  out:  "Boy's  give  'em  the  best 
you've  got,  we  aint  dead  yet."  A  cheer  was  his 
answer,  and  as  every  gun  on  the  boat  poured  its 
iron  hail  into  one  or  another  of  the  enemy,  the 


"Cincinnati"  rolled  first  to  one  side  then  to  another, 
then  gave  a  convulsive  shudder  and  went  down  bow 
first  and  head  on  to  the  enemy.  It  was  an  exceed 
ingly  damp  time  for  the  crew  of  that  boat;  we  all 
piled  on  the  hurricane  deck,  and  from  that  there 
was  some  tall  and  lofty  scrambling  for  the  wheel 
house,  which,  thanks  to  the  shallow  place  we  were 
in,  remained  above  water.  And  now,  perched  like 
so  many  turkeys  on  a  country  corn  crib,  we  were 
enforced  spectators  of  the  exciting  and  magnifi 
cent  scene  around  us. 

By  this  time,  our  fleet  above  us,  had  arrived  on 
the  scene  of  action,  led  by  the  flagship  "Benton." 
Running  into  the  very  midst  of  the  enemy's  fleet 
she  gave  her  bow  battery  of  nine-inch  Dahlgren 
guns,  then  wheeling,  her  starboard,  stern  and  port 
broadsides.  By  the  time  her  bow  swung  around, 
her  guns  were  again  loaded,  and  repeating  her  circl 
ing  again  and  again,  she  delivered  a  living  sheet  of 
death  and  destruction.  Several  of  the  Confederate 
rams  tried  to  reach  her,  but  were  either  intercepted 
by  our  other  boats,  who  one  after  another  joined 
the  melee,  or  were  literally  beaten  back  by  the 
storm  of  shot  and  shell  that  poured  from  her  sides. 

Soon  the  air  was  so  full  of  smoke  that  little 
could  be  seen;  every  now  and  then  a  Confederate 
ram  would  rush  past  us  within  a  stone's  throw;  then 
a  shell  would  burst  over  our  heads,  or  a  solid  shot 
plough  up  the  water.  I  have  seen  pictures  in  our 
illustrated  papers,  labelled  "by  our  artist  on  the 
spot" — but  perched  up  on  the  wheel  house  in  the 
midst  of  this  hell  on  earth,  I  modestly  claim  to 
coming  as  near  filling  this  bill  as  any  man  in 
America.  But  ten  minutes  settled  it,  two  of  the 
enemy's  boats  were  floating  broadsides  down  the 


river,  the  "General  Bragg,"  whose  insides  we 
blew  out,  and  one  other.  The  remaining  four 
were  making  as  good  time  for  the  fort  as  lay  in 
their  power;  we  could  not  save  our  prizes,  for  we 
neither  dared  to  go  after  them,  nor  could  we  have 
towed  them  upstream,  if  we  had.  The  "  Cin 
cinnati's"  wheelhouse  was  soon  relieved  of  its  dead 
and  living  freight,  and  an  hour  afterward  the  air 
and  the  mighty  flood  had  swept  away  every  vestige 
of  the  conflict. 

General  Halleck's  movement  on  Corinth  turned 
the  enemy's  position  at  Fort  Pillow  and  it  was 
abandoned,  and  on  June  4th,  1862,  we  were  again 
on  our  way  down  the  river,  joined  by  several  Ohio 
River  towboats  converted  into  rams  by  Colonel 
Ellet.  This  Colonel  Ellet  was  one  of  the  remark 
able  characters  of  the  war;  he  had  nearly  gone  in 
sane  on  the  ram  question  and  had  written  circulars 
and  besieged  the  departments  at  Washington  until 
they  nearly  went  insane  too.  He  was  finally  given 
permission  to  fit  out  a  ram  fleet;  sixty  days  from 
the  time  he  received  this  commission,  he  was  on 
the  way  down  the  river  with  five  powerful  boats 
filled  in  at  the  bows  and  around  the  boilers,  and 
manned  by  some  of  the  most  desperate  characters 
that  entered  the  service  on  either  side;  friend 
feared  them  as  well  as  foe,  they  acknowledged 
allegiance  to  neither  army  or  navy,  but  claimed  to 
have  a  contract  to  settle  the  rebellion  in  their  own 
way.  Ordered  to  report  to  Flag  Officer  Davis, 
Colonel  Ellet  speedily  informed  that  worthy  and 
dignified  officer  that  he  had  come  down  there  for 
a  fight,  and  that  he  did  not  propose  tying  up  to  a 
tree  and  waiting  for  the  fight  to  find  him.  The 
Colonel  was  a  man  of  war  and  desired  no  one  to 


forget  it,  but  he  was  a  brave  old  man  and  the  effi 
cient  work  he  put  in  during  his  short  career  of 
thirty  days  may  well  cover  his  eccentricities. 

Arriving  two  miles  north  of  Memphis,  the  fleet 
came  to  anchor  and  got  ready  for  the  engagement 
it  was  felt  sure  would  take  place  before  Memphis 
would  fall  into  our  hands.  At  four  o'clock  on  the 
morning  of  June  6th,  the  entire  Confederate  navy, 
consisting  of  ten  vessels,  steamed  up  the  river  to 
attack  our  fleet.  The  entire  population  of  the 
city  lined  the  bank  of  the  river,  while  General 
Jefferson  Thompson,  C.  S.  A.,  in  his  best  Sunday 
uniform  and  on  his  noblest  steed,  was  explaining 
to  an  admiring  crowd  just  how  it  was  going  to  be 
done. 

The  Confederate  Flagship  "Little  Rebel," 
opened  the  battle  by  a  shot  when  she  was  a  mile 
below  us.  Our  squadron  was  soon  under  way, 
when  Flag  Officer  Davis  ran  up  the  signal  for  the 
boats  to  range  themselves  in  the  "third  order  of 
sailing."  Colonel  Ellet  was  at  work  getting  his 
rams  in  order,  and  this  eventful  morning  found  him 
with  but  two,  the  "Queen  of  the  West"  and  the 
"Monarch,"  ready  for  action.  Taking  command 
of  the  "Oueen,"  he  put  his  son,  A.  W.  Ellet,  in 
charge  of  the  other. 

«« This  was  the  time  he  long  had  sought, 
And  mourned  because  he  found  it  not." 

Interpreting  Flag  Officer  Davis'  "order  of  sailing" 
to  mean  "sail  without  order,"  he  called  out  to  his 
son  to  "come  on"  and  pulled  out  from  the  shore 
with  the  "Queen  of  the  West"  and  started  down 
the  stream  with  every  pound  of  steam  his  boat 
would  carry.  Singing  out  "  Come  on "  to  the 
Flag  Officer,  as  he  dashed  past  the  Flagship,  he 


selected  the  leading  boat  of  the  enemy's  center 
line,  the  "General  Lovell,"  as  his  prey;  the  "Gen 
eral  Lovell"  turned  out  of  line  to  meet  the  ad 
vancing  foe  and  crowded  on  all  steam;  if  these  two 
boats  had  met  in  this  way,  both  would  have  gone  to 
the  bottom  of  the  river,  but  for  some  reason  the 
"Lovell"  sheered  to  the  right  just  before  the  con 
tact,  when  the  "Queen"  struck  her  on  the  port  bow 
and  pretty  nearly  went  entirely  through.  The 
"Lovell"  rose  up,  and  then  went  down  with  all  on 
board.  As  soon  as  the  "Queen"  could  recover  her 
headway,  two  of  the  enemy's  boats,  the  "Beaure- 
gard"  and  "General  Price,"  both  made  for  her, 
the  one  on  the  right  and  the  other  on  the  left ;  the 
" Queen"  was  held  almost  stationary  and  it  was 
thought  she  was  disabled,  when,  as  both  of  the 
onrushing  boats  were  scarcely  one  hundred  feet 
from  her,  she  crowded  on  all  steam  and  slipping 
out  from  between  them,  they  came  together  with  a 
fearful  crash,  cutting  the  wheelhouse  clean  off  the 
"Price."  The  "Beauregard"  recovered  herself, 
and  turning  on  the  "Queen"  succeeded  in  disabl 
ing  her  port  wheel,  when  the  "Queen"  and  the 
"Price"  both  made  for  the  Arkansas  shore.  Col. 
Ellet  had  been  struck  by  a  bullet,  but  still  had  life 
enough  to  demand  the  surrender  of  the  "Price" 
as  they  both  struck  the  shore;  the  "Price"  sup 
posing  the  "Queen"  had  followed  her  for  that  pur 
pose,  complied  with  the  request;  thereupon  the 
Colonel  ordered  a  crew  of  four  men  into  one  of 
her  row  boats  and  sent  them  across  the  river  to  de 
mand  the  surrender  of  Memphis. 

The  battle  was  now  on,  thick  and  hot.  Our  gun 
boats  had  formed  into  three  lines  to  meet  the  Con 
federate  line  of  battle,  but  Colonel  Ellet's  raid  with 


the  "Queen  of  the  West"  had  demoralized  that  to 
the  extent  of  drawing  off  the  leading  boat  in  each 
line.  One  of  them  already  lay  at  the  bottom  of 
the  river,  another  was  beached  on  the  Arkansas 
shore,  a  third,  the  "Beauregard,"  had  already  been 
racked  in  a  ramming  match  with  Colonel  Ellet's 
other  boat,  the  "Monarch."  Such  was  the  situa 
tion  when  the  Union  fleet,in  perfect  order,led  by  the 
Flagship"Benton,"strucktheadvanceoftheenemy. 

It  was  a  magnificent  sight  before  the  first  gen 
eral  broadside  was  fired.  The  river  here  is  un 
usually  wide,  admitting  as  few  places  could  in  the 
West,  of  a  scientific  naval  action  between  fleets, 
The  shore  was  black  with  anxious  and  eager 
spectators ;  an  hour  was  to  decide  once  and  for 
ever,  the  control  of  the  Mississippi.  A  deafening 
roar,  as  both  fleets  discharged  almost  simultan 
eously  a  general  broadside,  and  a  thick,  black 
cloud  of  smoke  hid  everything  from  the  thousands 
of  anxious  eyes  on  the  shore;  in  that  dense  cloud 
was  being  waged  one  of  the  sharpest  and  most 
decisive  battles  of  the  war,  a  hand-to-hand 
struggle,  no  quarter  was  asked  or  given.  It  was 
literally  a  fight  to  the  finish.  The  rapid  discharge 
of  heavy  guns,  the  crash  of  timbers,  the  yells  of 
the  combatants,  worked  the  vast  crowd  of  specta 
tors  on  shore  into  a  frenzy.  Cheer  upon  cheer 
came  from  that  vast  throng  as  some  steamer  with 
the  Confederate  flag  flying  was  seen  through  the 
smoke;  groans,  howls  and  curses,  when  a  Union 
boat  came  in  sight.  An  hour  of  this  awful  strain, 
and  the  guns  were  heard  less  and  less  often:  "The 
Yankee  Fleet  is  destroyed,"  was  the  word. 

The  great  bank  of  smoke  rose!      First  dimly, 
then  clearer,  vision  was  restored.     What  a  sight 


(W  O'SEO 


met  that  frantic  mob!  Scattered  here  and  there 
across  the  expanse  of  water,  were  war  vessels,  but 
death  and  destruction !  they  all  floated  the  cursed 
stars  and  stripes.  Where  was  the  Confederate  Navy? 
Three  boats  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  river,  with 
Union  sailors  busy  rescuing  the  drowning  crews; 
three  more  were  beached  on  the  opposite  shore, 
where  Colonel  Ellet,  with  his  "Queen  of  the 
West"  in  the  same  condition,  was  busy  accepting 
their  surrender.  The  "Jefferson  Thompson," 
with  one  of  our  boats  in  hot  pursuit,  ran  into  a 
point  below  the  island  and  blew  up  with  a 
tremendous  report;  two  more  of  the  fleet,  with 
flags  down,  were  lyingpeacefully  alongside  of  Union 
boats,  and  the  one  surviving  relic  of  that  once 
proud  fleet,  the  •'  General  Van  Dorn,"  made 
most  remarkable  time  down  the  river,  with  the 
ram  "Monitor"  in  hot  pursuit.  An  indescribable 
sound,  something  between  a  wail  and  a  curse,  went 
up  from  the  throng  on  shore.  General  Jefferson 
Thompson  mounted  his  steed,  saying:  "They  are 
gone  and  I  am  going."  Memphis  was  ours,  and 
the  power  of  the  Confederacy  afloat  on  Western 
waters,  was  no  more. 

The  next  stage  in  the  history  of  naval  opera 
tions  on  the  Mississippi  brings  us  to  the  times 
of  Admiral  Porter  and  that  sublime  old  hero, 
Farragut — 

««  That  Viking  of  the  river  fight, 
The  conqueror  of  the  bay, 
I  give  the  name  that  fits  him  best, 
Aye,  better  than  his  own, 
The  sea  king  of  the  sovereign  West 
Who  made  his  mast  a  throne." 

Abler  pens  than  mine  must  do  justice  to  those 
later  days. 


CIVIL  WAR  PAPERS 
NUMBER  THREE 


CAREER  OF  THE  CONFED 
ERATE  RAM  "ARKANSAS." 
Given  by  Eliot  Callender  before 
the  Farragut  Naval  Veterans  Asso 
ciation,  Palmer  House,  Chicago. 


(N  a  former  paper  read  before  this  Asso 
ciation,  in  which  an  effort  was  made  to 
give  the  history  of  the  Mississippi  Squad 
ron  up  to  the  fall  of  Memphis,  an  allu 
sion  was  made  in  describing  the  prepara 
tions  of  the  Confederacy  in  the  naval  line,  to  two 
war  vessels  in  process  of  construction,  one  the 
"Stephen  Mallory,"  which  our  forces  destroyed 
at  Memphis  on  the  stocks,  and  another,  the 
"Arkansas,"  which  we  heard  from  later. 

This  paper  will  be  principally  confined  to  what 
we  heard.  I  know  of  no  more  interesting  event 
of  the  War  than  the  career  of  the  Confederate 
Ram  "Arkansas,"  and  while  the  incidents  con 
nected  therewith  may  not  touch  our  pride,  I  trust 
there  is  no  soldier  or  sailor  of  the  late  War  that 
can  not  appreciate  bravery  and  gallantry,  no  mat 
ter  whether  exhibited  by  friend  or  foe.  We  were 
Americans  all,  before  the  days  of  the  Civil  War, 
and,  thank  God,  we  are  Americans  all  to-day,  and 
while  there  was  a  time  when  many  rose  up  to  deny 
we  were  a  Nation,  they  were  mistaken.  The  big 
"N"  in  front  of  that  word  never  shrank  up  or 
dropped  out.  It  is  there  to-day,  and  those  who 
fought  us,  will  help  us  henceforth  to  keep  it  there. 
After  the  battle  of  Memphis,  Flag-Officer 
Davis  found  nothing  to  arrest  the  progress  of  his 
squadron,  until  the  frowning  hills  of  Vicksburg 
caused  him  to  drop  anchor  at  Young's  Point, 
about  five  miles  in  a  direct  line  from  the  city. 
Admiral  Farragut  had  already  preceded  him,  hav 
ing  run  the  batteries  at  Port  Hudson  and  Grand 
Gulf  and  steamed  boldly  by  the  three  miles  of 
fortifications  at  Vicksburg,  with  the  "Hartford," 


"Richmond,"  "Oneida,"  "Iroquois,"  "Wenona," 
"  Wissahicon" — wooden  ships,  but  manned  by  iron 
men.  The  army,  under  the  command  of  General 
Williams,  was  camped  along  the  shore  from 
Young's  Point  to  Milliken's  Bend,  a  distance  of 
ten  miles.  The  inference  was  that  a  combined 
assault  by  the  army  and  navy  was  impending,  for, 
almost  daily,  fresh  arrivals  of  troops  came  down  the 
river  and  every  available  man-of-war  from  the  Gulf 
to  Cairo  lay  within  ten  miles  of  Vicksburg.  It  was 
one  of  the  greatest  gatherings  of  the  War  and  the 
air  was  full  of  the  bustle  of  preparation.  Along 
the  Louisiana  shore,  for  a  mile  or  more,  lay  the 
army  transports,  ordinance  boats,  hospital  boats, 
hay  barges  and  craft  of  every  description.  There 
was  a  sample  of  almost  everything  in  the  West 
that  carried  a  wheel  or  had  a  hull,  and  some  of 
these  had  little  to  boast  of,  in  either  of  these 
essentials.  The  river  here,  at  the  time  of  which 
I  write,  was  a  turbid  stream,  about  three-quarters 
of  a  mile  wide,  and  anchored  about  two-thirds  of 
the  way  to  the  Mississippi  shore,  in  one  long  line 
parallel  to  the  transports  on  the  Louisiana  shore, 
lay  the  combined  fleets  of  Admirals  Farragut  and 
Davis.  Twelve  miles  above,  the  deep  and  slug 
gish  Yazoo  joined  its  waters  with  the  Mississipi. 

It  was  not  my  fortune  to  witness  any  of  the 
combined  army  and  naval  operations  on  the 
Atlantic  and  Gulf  Coasts,  but  I  doubt  if  any 
thing  in  the  War  rivalled  in  picturesqueness  and 
interest  the  scenes  above  Vicksburg  in  those  Sum 
mer  days  of  1862.  The  day  was  ushered  in  with 
the  echoes  of  bugle  calls,  the  rat-a-tat-tat  of  snare 
drums,  the  smoke  of  a  thousand  camp  fires 
mingling  with  the  morning  air.  Busy  little  steam 


tugs  puffed  and  darted  hither  and  yon  across  the 
river.  Now  and  then,  the  strains  of  a  band  of 
music  would  be  wafted  from  the  deck  of  one  of  the 
big  men-of-war,  whose  frowning  batteries  were 
duplicated  in  the  bosom  of  the  river  below. 
Gay-colored  signal  flags  would  be  run  up  to  the 
mast  head  of  the  Admiral's  flag  ship  and  as  quickly 
disappear,  as  if  ashamed  to  exist  in  the  presence 
of  the  magnificent  American  ensign,  which  floated 
idly  at  the  stern.  Now  some  general,  with  his 
gaily-caparisoned  staff,  would  gallop  along  the  road 
beyond  the  levee  and  shortly  a  cloud  of  dust  and 
loud  cracking  of  whips,  accompanied  with  remarks 
not  appropriate  for  Sunday  Schools,  betokened 
the  moving  of  artillery.  A  cloud  of  black  smoke 
away  up  the  river  preceded  several  additional  trans 
ports,  loaded  to  the  guards  with  fresh  troops.  The 
cheers  from  the  boats  were  answered  with  cheers 
from  the  shore,  and  so  all  day  long  and  way  into 
the  night,  this  never-ceasing  panorama  of  life  and 
bustle  and  beauty  moved  on.  As  the  sun  dropped 
down  behind  the  heavy-wooded  Louisiana  shore, 
myriads  of  camp  fires  crept  out  of  the  darkness. 
The  strains  of  some  familiar  song  would  be  wafted 
on  the  evening  air,  to  be  drowned,  perhaps,  by  a 
rollicking  chorus,  shouts  of  laughter,  and  finally 
peace  and  quiet  reigned,  disturbed,  if  at  all,  by  the 
sweet  echoes  of  the  half  hour  bells  on  the  men- 
of-war  and  now  and  then  the  regular  click,  click 
of  oars  working  in  their  rowlocks,  as  some  belated 
officer  with  his  boat's  crew  hurried  home.  Can 
this  be  war?  Look  behind  you.  Frowning  and 
dark  and  ominous,  with  its  gilded  Court  House 
dome  like  an  angel  of  death  inviting  all  to  its 
deadly  embrace,  lay  the  heights  of  Vicksburg. 


While  awaiting  the  proposed  movement  of  the 
army,  there  came  to  our  ears  from  time  to  time, 
rumors  of  a  Confederate  iron-clad  in  course  of 
preparation  up  the  dark  recesses  of  the  Yazoo. 
It  was  generally  from  the  intelligent  contraband, 
just  escaped  from  the  old  plantation,  that  the  most 
vivid  details  of  this  mysterious  craft  were  derived. 
They  had  all  seen  it,  but  apparently  from  different 
points  of  the  compass,  for  there  seemed  to  be  a 
marked  lack  of  similarity  in  the  descriptions. 
Combining  the  accounts  would  have  produced  a 
monster.  "Pretty  nigh  as  big  as  de  whole  ribber;" 
"Guns  bigger'n  any  two  around  hyer;"  "Iron  a 
foot  thick  all  ober  her  and  underneath  her  and  on 
top  of  her;"  "An  as  fer  de  ram,  dat  was  jess  de 
wuss  ram  agoin — could  jess  bust  de  stufHns  outer 
de  rock  of  Gibralter;"  "An  all  de  lower  regions 
couldn't  catch  dat  boat  when  she  got  a  move  on 
her — you  uns  will  see  some  morning  and  nebber 
know  what  you  was  a  seein."  With  all  due 
allowance  for  the  Southern  darkies'  recognized 
ability  in  the  line  of  ornamental  and  picturesque 
lying,  there  seemed  to  prevail  an  intuition  that 
these  narratives  had  at  least  a  foundation,  and  after 
several  conferences  between  Admirals  Farragut 
and  Davis  an  expedition  was  formed  under  the 
command  of  Captain  Walke,  consisting  of  the 
partially  iron-clad  gunboat,  "Carondelet,"  the 
wooden  gunboat,  "Tyler"  and  the  Ellet  ram, 
"Queen  of  the  West,"  with  instructions  to  pro 
ceed  up  the  Yazoo  river  and  destroy  the  Confed 
erate  ram,  if  it  were  practicable.  Captain  Walke 
of  the  "Carondelet"  got  underway  at  four  o'clock 
in  the  morning  of  July  I5th,  and  steamed  up  the 
river,  but  was  passed  by  both  the  "Tyler"  and 


the  "Queen  of  the  West"  before  reaching    the 
mouth  of  the  Yazoo,  ten  miles  above. 

Now,  while  all  this  was  going  on,  Captain  Isaac 
N.  Brown,  C.  S.  N.,  formerly  of  the  United  States 
Navy,  a  classmate  of  Captain  Walke  at  Annapolis, 
found  himself  in  shape  this  very  July  morning  to 
get  underway  with  the  C.  S.  S.  "Arkansas,"  which 
had  been  fitting  out  at  Yazoo  City  since  the  naval 
action  at  Memphis.  The  "Arkansas"  was  almost 
a  twin  of  the  far-famed  "Merrimac";  it  was  180 
feet  long,  60  feet  beam,  heavily  plated  with  T-rail, 
tongued  and  grooved,  and  had  a  cast  iron  beak  or 
prow  weighing  18,000  pounds.  Back  of  three 
inches  of  railroad  iron  was  a  foot  of  live  oak.  Her 
sides  fell  off  at  an  angle  of  thirty-five  degrees.  She 
drew  thirteen  feet  with  her  armament  of  ten  guns, 
two  of  which  were  loo-pound  Columbiads,  two 
rifles,  32*5,  and  a  bow  battery  of  two  64/8.  Her 
engines  were  very  powerful,  and  the  intention  of 
her  builders  ran  much  in  the  direction  of  her  ram, 
necessitating  great  speed.  She  carried  a  crew  of 
130  men,  picked  up  from  the  relics  of  the  fight 
at  Memphis,  and  about  seventy  Missouri  soldiers 
from  General  Jefferson  Thompson's  command. 
With  a  motley  ill-disciplined  crew,  with  a  new 
and  untried  boat,  Captain  Isaac  N.  Brown  cast 
loose  that  morning  from  below  the  mouth  of  the 
Sunflower,  fifteen  miles  from  the  Mississippi,  and 
turning  the  bow  of  the  "Arkansas"  down  stream 
to  face  what  no  men  before  him,  or  after  him,  in 
that  war,  or  any  other  war,  ever  faced  before.  It 
was  not  long  before  the  ram,  "Queen  of  the 
West,"  under  Captain  Jas.  Hunter  of  the  army, 
in  rounding  a  bend,  discovered  the  "Arkansas" 
coming  down  the  river  under  a  full  head  of  steam. 


The  "Queen"  apparently  was  not  pleased  at  the 
discovery,  for  she  swung  around  and  started  back 
with  a  64-pound  shot  crashing  through  her  frame, 
from  the  bow  guns  of  the  "Arkansas."  Passing 
the  "Carondelet"  and  the  "Tyler,"  she  was  com 
manded  by  Captain  Walke  to  proceed  with  all 
speed  and  inform  the  fleet  of  the  coming  of  the 
"Arkansas."  This  she  did  not  do,  but  hovered 
around  the  outskirts  of  the  fight,  which  now 
opened  between  the  "Arkansas,"  "Carondelet," 
and  "Tyler."  Let  us  bear  in  mind  that  the 
"Arkansas"  was  more  than  a  match  for  these  two 
boats,  being  heavily  armored  all  around,  while  the 
"Carondelet"  had  but  2^  inches  of  iron  over  her 
bow  battery  and  a  similar  protection  amidships, 
the  length  of  her  boilers.  The  "Tyler"  was 
simply  a  wooden  gunboat,  with  no  protection,  but 
carried  as  her  commander  one  of  the  bravest  and 
truest  hearts  God  ever  made,  in  Lieut-Corn.  Wm. 
W.  N.  Gwin.  The  "Carondelet"  opened  on  her 
rapidly  approaching  foe  with  her  bow  battery,  and 
then  made  the  almost  fatal  mistake  of  turning  in 
mid  stream,  thus  exposing  her  unprotected  stern 
to  a  raking  fire  from  the  heavy  bow  battery  of  her 
antagonist.  The  "Tyler,"  from  the  beginning  to 
the  time  the  "Arkansas"  reached  the  Mississippi, 
never  once  withdrew  from  the  range  of  the  enemy's 
guns,  but  kept  up  an  incessant  fire,  and  there  is 
no  doubt  that  Gwin's  courage  and  skill  saved  both 
his  own  boat  and  the  "Carondelet."  Walke  stated 
that  he  turned  his  boat  to  avoid  being  rammed  and 
sunk  by  his  antagonist,  but  failed  to  state  the  ad 
vantage  of  being  rammed  in  the  rear  to  being  ram 
med  in  front.  The  "Arkansas"  was  now  within  100 
feet  of  the  "Carondelet,"  but  so  far  not  a  shot  from 


the  Union  boats  had  succeeded  in  injuring  her. 
The  heavy  64-pound  balls  would  strike  and  in 
variably  be  deflected  and  shoot  up  into  the  air  from 
her  inclined  sides,  while  every  ball  from  the 
"Arkansas"  raked  the  "Carondelet"  from  stem 
to  stern.  The  "Arkansas"  now  made  a  rush  for 
its  antagonist,  with  the  idea  of  sinking  her.  The 
"Carondelet"  was  past  handling,  as  her  rudders 
and  steering  apparatus  were  all  shot  away.  Just 
at  this  juncture,  one  of  the  engines  on  the 
"Arkansas"  refused  to  work,  and  the  rapid  action 
of  the  other  turned  her  head  around  and  ran  her 
into  the  woods  inside  of  the  "Carondelet."  Both 
boats  now  lay  alongside  of  each  other,  discharging 
broadside  after  broadside;  so  near  were  the  com 
batants  that  men  on  both  boats  were  actually 
blinded  by  unburnt  powder,  blown  into  their  faces. 
Gwin,  ever  alert,  now  ran  up  with  the  "Tyler," 
across  the  bow  of  the  "Arkansas,"  manned  his 
hammock  nettings  with  sharpshooters,  belted  a 
64-pound  shell  into  the  "Arkansas's"  pilot  house, 
while  his  sharpshooters  took  off  every  man  that 
showed  himself.  Captain  Brown  of  the  "Arkansas" 
was  knocked  senseless  in  the  pilot  house,  and  on 
recovering  was  struck  in  the  temple  by  a  glancing 
shot  of  a  Minie  ball.  The  smoke  stack  of  the 
"Arkansas"  was  so  shot  to  pieces  that  it  was  virtu 
ally  useless  as  a  draft  to  the  furnaces.  Another 
"Tyler"  and  another  Commander  Gwin  would 
have  settled  the  "Arkansas  then  and  there,  but  he 
had  a  foeman  worthy  of  his  steel,  in  the  gallant 
Brown  of  the  "Arkansas."  Dazed  and  nearly 
stunned  with  his  wounds,  with  broadside  after 
broadside  poured  into  his  boat,  with  dead  and 
wounded  men  strewn  over  his  deck,  in  that  stifl- 


ing  heat  and  smoke,  he  sprang  to  his  engineer's 
assistance  and  soon  the  "Arkansas"  pulled  slowly 
out  from  the  crippled  "Carondelet"  and  started 
after  the  "Tyler,"  with  greatly  diminished  speed. 
Every  shot  crashed  through  the  wooden  ends  of 
the  "Tyler,"  which  kept  up  the  unequal  combat 
until  they  emerged  into  the  Mississippi  in  sight 
of  the  Union  Fleet.     First  the  "Queen  of  the 
West,"  then  the  "Tyler"  riddled  with  shot,  her 
smoke  stacks  about  ready  to  fall,  her  boats  hang 
ing  by  one  end  to  their  davits,  but  her  flag  still  up, 
and  last  the  "Arkansas."  What  a  sight  met  Brown's 
eyes  as    he  stood  that  morning  on  the  deck  of 
his  boat  and  ordered  her  headed  down  stream. 
Stretched  along  for  two  miles  or  more  was  the 
Union  Fleet  anchored  in  midstream.    There  was 
the  gallant  "Hartford,"  flying  Admiral  Farragut's 
blue  flag;    the  sloop  of   war  "Richmond,"   the 
"Iroquois,"  the  "Wenona"  and  the"Wissahicon," 
then  came  Flag  Officer  Davis'  squadron,  consist 
ing  of  five  ironclads,  to  say  nothing  of  some  five 
or  six  so-called  rams,  about  which,  Brown  in  his 
report  says  that  they  were  very  harmless  sheep. 
When  old  Colonel  Ellet  died,  the  record  of  his 
ram  fleet  died  with  him.     Eight  miles  to  Vicks- 
burg.     Would  he  make  it?     With   a  partially- 
disabled  engine;  with  both  pilots  dead;  with  one- 
third  of  his  crew  killed  or  disabled;  with  his  steam 
run  down  from  120  pounds  to  between  30  or  40, 
owing   to  the   destruction   of  his  furnace  draft, 
there  was  but  one  answer  to  any  less  daring  and 
gallant  heart  than  his.    He  would  make  it  and  he 
did.     Taking  the  open  space  between  the  army 
transports  along  the  Louisiana  shore,  he  ordered 
the  man  at  the  wheel  to  hold   her  as   near  the 


Union  war  vessels  as  possible,  and  started  in.  By 
this  action  he  virtually  spiked  three-fourths  of  the 
guns  of  the  entire  fleet,  as  every  shot  that  missed 
the  "Arkansas"  could  not  fail  to  strike  our  own 
transports  and  hospital  boats  that  lined  the  other 
shore. 

Before  we  go  into  the  impending  struggle,  per 
mit  me  to  call  your  attention  to  a  choice  and  select 
coterie  of  newspaper  reporters,  who  made  life  a 
burden  on  the  Steamboat  "J.  H.  Dickey,"  which 
had  been  assigned  to  them  as  headquarters.  I 
cannot  now  recall  many  of  their  names,  but  Mc- 
Cullough,  of  the  St.  Louis  Globe  Democrat,  and 
Knox,  of  the  New  York  Herald,  who  has  since 
become  famous  as  a  writer  of  books  of  travel, 
were  leading  spirits  in  this  circle.  The  heavy 
cannonading  up  the  Yazoo  had  awakened  a  lively 
interest  in  these  gentlemen,  all  of  whom  had 
manufactured  whole  columns  of  news,  on  a  good 
deal  less  provocation.  Their  pencils  were  sharp 
ened,  their  paper  was  ready,  if  somte  one  could 
only  tell  them  what  was  going  on.  The  informa 
tion  came  without  any  help,  when  the  "Queen  of 
the  West,"  the  "Tyler"  and  the  "Arkansas,"  all 
came  piling  out  of  the  Yazoo,  with  wrecked  smoke 
stacks  and  hanging  boats.  As  soon  as  it  was  evi 
dent  that  the  Confederate  boat  contemplated  a 
raid  through  the  Union  Fleet,  many  conflicting 
emotions  pervaded  these  brethren.  They  wanted 
to  see  the  fight,  but  duty  to  the  dear  ones  at  home 
didn't  seem  to  call  them  to  be  participants.  The 
key  note  was  struck,  when  one  of  them  suggested 
that  the  "J.  H.  Dickey"  was  a.  great  big  boat  and 
as  such  was  most  likely  to  call  for  special  attention 
from  the  "Arkansas."  Contemplation  of  this 


thought,  enlarged  the  "Dickey"  to  such  propor 
tions,  that  they  unanimously  resolved  on  an  in 
stantaneous  and  radical  change  of  base.  Directly 
in  front  of  the  "Dickey,"  tied  up  to  the  bank  was 
an  inoffensive,  mild-looking  hay  barge.  It  was 
decked  over  at  each  end  and  open  in  the  middle. 
"To  the  hay  barge,"  was  the  cry,  and  to  the  num 
ber  of  ten  or  a  dozen,  a  mad  scramble  was  made 
for  the  newly-found  haven  of  refuge,  which  to  their 
excited  imaginations  was  little  less  than  a  Provi 
dential  dispensation,  for  the  "Arkansas"  would 
certainly  pay  no  attention  to  an  insignificant  hay 
barge  and  under  the  protection  of  the  covered 
ends  they  could  watch  the  fight  through  the  spaces 
between  the  boards  and  push  their  pencils  in  that 
security  and  peace  of  mind,  so  essential  to  high- 
grade  literary  work. 

Down  came  the  "Arkansas"  keeping  her  port 
battery  hot  as  she  passed  one  after  another  of  the 
Union  Fleet.  Paying  no  attention  to  the  fleet  of 
steamboats  on  her  starboard  side,  until  she  came 
abreast  of  this  hay  barge,  laden  as  it  was  with  the 
brains  of  a  dozen  of  the  leading  newspapers  of  the 
North — evidently  figuring  it  out  as  an  ordnance 
boat,  loaded  with  ammunition — the  "Arkansas" 
let  fly  her  entire  starboard  broadside  at  it.  Such 
a  crashing  of  timbers  was  never  heard  this  side  of 
Pandemonium.  The  barge  doubled  up  in  the 
middle.  The  air  was  full  of  pine  plank  and — 

"The  Boys,  Oh  where  were  they  !  " 

With  a  yell  that  would  have  done  credit  to 
Comanche  Indians,  they  jumped  through  the 
wreck  of  falling  timbers;  onto  and  up  the  bank 
of  the  river,  and  struck  out  for  the  interior  of  the 


State  at  a  rate  that  no  cyclometer  that  ever  has 
been  invented  could  record. 

Onward  came  the  "Arkansas,"  she  had  already 
passed  the  "Richmond"  and  the  "Iroquois,"  and 
now  came  abreast  of  the  "Hartford,"  the  pride  of 
our  Navy.  Standing  on  the  deck  of  that  boat, 
with  feelings  that  could  be  better  imagined  than 
described,  stood  the  lion-hearted  Farragut,  his  face 
rigid  with  excitement.  Beneath  him  lay  the  open 
mouths  of  thirteen  64*5;  behind  these  guns  stood 
the  trained  crews  that  had  dealt  out  death  and 
destruction  with  them  at  New  Orleans.  Thirteen 
captains  of  those  guns  stood  with  lock  strings  in 
hand,  with  arms  raised,  and  waited  but  for  a  word. 
Slowly  the  "Arkansas"  glided  by;  the  boats  were 
not  over  1 50  yards  apart.  A  puff  of  white  smoke 
from  the  bow  gun  of  the  "Arkansas,"  followed  in 
rapid  succession  by  two  more  from  her  port  bat 
tery.  The  shells  flew  past  and  over  the  "Hart 
ford,"  cutting  some  of  her  rigging.  The  pale  face 
of  the  Admiral  never  changed.  The  word  that 
every  man,  from  the  Executive  Officer  to  the 
Messenger  boy,  was  crazy  to  hear,  never  came. 
Why  this  soul-destroying  silence?  Look  beyond 
the  "Arkansas"  and  see  the  yellow  flag  in  a  direct 
line  flying  over  the  hospital  boat.  Look  beyond 
the  yellow  flag  and  see  the  white  tents  of  our  army 
stretching  along  and  away  from  the  shore,  and  you 
can  explain  the  Admiral's  pale  face  and  tell  why 
his  lips  never  opened.  The  "Hartford"  passed, 
the  "Arkansas"  gives  a  gun  to  the  "Wenona" 
and  two  to  the  "Wissahicon,"  receiving  a  gun 
from  both  as  she  passed  them,  and  the  shore  was 
no  longer  in  a  direct  line.  Every  shot  striking 
the  "Arkansas"  and  in  every  case  being  deflected 


up  into  the  air,  by  her  inclined  iron  casements;  but 
as  she  got  well  past  the  "Wissahicon,"  that  spite 
ful  little  boat  put  a  nine-inch  shell  into  one  of  the 
after-ports  of  the  ram,  which  exploded,  disabling 
a  gun  and  killing  and  wounding  eleven  men. 

Flag  Officer  Davis'  iron-clad  fleet  lay  rather  to 
the  rear  toward  the  Mississippi  shore  and  farther 
down  the  river;  but  few  guns  were  fired  from  this 
fleet,  for  reasons  already  given.  One  iron  clad, 
the  "Cincinnati,"  lay  half  a  mile  below  the  rest, 
on  picket  duty.  She  had  barely  steam  enough 
raised  to  turn  her  wheel  over.  The  "Arkansas," 
though  badly  disfigured,  was  still  in  the  ring,  and 
having  passed  all  the  other  boats,  made  for  the 
lone  "Cincinnati,"  with  no  very  amiable  intentions. 
The  "Cincinnati"  gave  her  her  bow  battery  of 
three  nine-inch  Dahlgrens;  every  shot  struck  her 
antagonist  square  on  her  bow  casemates,  and  all 
three  of  these  immense  solid  shot  flew  up  in  the 
air,  plainly  visible  to  the  naked  eye,  until  they 
were  hardly  larger  than  marbles.  The  "Arkansas" 
appeared  to  have  but  one  of  her  forward  guns  in 
working  order,  but  with  that  she  struck  the  "Cin 
cinnati"  twice,  and  then  started  for  her  with  her 
great  steel  beak.  The  "Cincinnati"  slipped  her 
anchor,  and  having  so  little  steam  on  she  drifted 
quartering  down  the  river  toward  the  Mississippi 
shore.  A  long  sand  bar  extended  out  into  the 
river  from  this  shore.  On  came  the  "Arkansas," 
with  every  pound  of  steam  her  disabled  engines 
could  handle,  when  within  one  hundred  feet  of  the 
"Cincinnati"  she  ran  aground,  drawing  thirteen 
feet,  while  our  boat  drew  only  six.  Now  was  the 
"Cincinnati's"  chance.  Oh,  for  steam  to  handle 
that  boat!  But  it  was  not  there.  She  got  in  her 


bow  and  starboard  batteries  of  nine-inch  Dahlgrens 
and  smooth  64*8,  but  not  one  shot  appeared  to  hurt 
her  antagonist,  which  was  doing  its  best  to  get  off 
the  bar.  Could  the  "Cincinnati"  have  run  up 
alongside  and  boarded,  the  ram  might  have 
changed  her  colors.  But  it  was  not  to  be.  Slowly 
the  ram  drew  off  the  bar  and  swung  down  stream 
and  was  soon  around  the  bend.  Our  boys  on  the 
other  shore  could  plainly  hear  the  cheers  of  the 
Confederates  as  the  gallant  Brown  and  his  battered 
boat  tied  up  to  the  shore  at  the  foot  of  the  Main 
Street  in  Vicksburg. 

I  respectfully  insist  that  for  coolness  and  brav 
ery,  for  desperate  chances  offered  and  taken,  the 
records  of  the  Civil  War  will  show  nothing  equal 
to  the  raid  that  morning  of  the  Confederate 
steamer  "Arkansas"  through  the  combined  fleets 
of  Admiral  Farragut  and  Flag  Officer  Davis.  She 
had  been  struck  between  forty  and  fifty  times;  had 
both  of  her  pilots  killed;  her  commander  badly 
wounded;  one  engine  completely  disabled;  her 
boilers  were  leaking  so  that  one  could  not  see  across 
her  decks  for  the  escaping  steam;  and  out  of  a 
crew  of  two  hundred  men,  the  night  of  July  1 5th 
found  her  with  but  twenty-eight  able  for  duty,  and 
with  but  four  of  her  ten  guns  in  condition  for 
service.  But  Captain  I.  N.  Brown,  C.  S.  N.,  had 
thrown  the  gauntlet  in  the  face  of  one  that  morn 
ing  that  could  not  live  and  stand  it. 

The  "Arkansas"  had  hardly  turned  the  bend  at 
Vicksburg  when  there  was  a  bustle  of  preparation 
on  the  deck  of  the  "Harford"  and  by  afternoon 
an  immense  anchor  was  safely  triced  out  on  the 
end  of  her  main  yard.  That  night,  Farragut's 
entire  fleet  turned  down  stream,  the  "Hartford"  in 


the  lead.  The  Admiral's  plan  was  to  run  up  along 
side  the  "Arkansas,"  and  if  his  broadsides  wouldn't 
faze  her,  to  drop  that  anchor  from  its  lofty  perch, 
feeling  assured  that  it  would  carry  with  it  to  the 
bottom  of  the  river  all  that  was  left  of  his  gallant 
antagonist.  But  he  was  still  doomed  to  disap 
pointment.  The  "Arkansas"  could  not  be  found 
in  the  darkness  of  the  night,  until  they  had  passed, 
she  having  been  run  up  into  a  little  cove  or  bay. 
Brown  says  he  never  saw  anything  equal  to  the  run 
ning  of  the  three  miles  of  batteries  that  night  by 
Farragut's  wooden  ships.  They  doubled  on  their 
tracks  and  ran  back  searching  for  their  antagonist 
when  sky,  land  and  water  were  merged  into  a  com 
mon  hell  of  death  and  destruction. 

Five  days  after,  the  "Essex,"  Com.  W.  D. 
Porter,  which  had  just  joined  Flag  Officer  Davis' 
fleet,  together  with  the  ram  "Queen  of  the  West," 
made  a  savage  assault  on  the  "Arkansas"  in  the 
dead  of  a  very  dark  night. 

The  "Arkansas"  was  undergoing  repairs — had 
but  one  engine  and  but  four  guns  that  could  be 
served.  Both  the  "Essex"  and  the  "Queen" 
made  repeated  attempts  at  ramming,  and  the 
former,  with  her  magnificent  battery,  pretty  nearly 
closed  up  the  "Arkansas'  "  career.  The  latter  had 
but  twenty-eight  men  on  her,  and  eleven  of  these 
were  killed,  together  with  the  Missouri  soldier, 
who  had  piloted  her  through  our  fleet  after  the 
death  of  both  her  regular  pilots.  But  the  bluff 
and  shore  batteries  made  it  too  warm  for  our 
boats,  and  the  "Essex"  dropped  down  the  river 
to  Farragut's  fleet,  while  the  "Queen  of  the 
West,"  badly  riddled  with  shell  and  shot,  returned 
to  the  fleet  above,  and  the  "Arkansas"  still  lived. 


Partially  repaired,  but  still  not  fit  for  service,  she 
was  ordered  down  the  river  by  General  Van  Dorn 
to  fight  Farragut's  fleet  at  Grand  Gulf.  Brown, 
her  commander,  being  yet  in  the  hospital  from  his 
wounds,  she  left  Vicksburg  with  but  half  her  com 
plement  of  men,  on  the  morning  of  August  6th. 
Brown,  hearing  of  this,  jumped  on  a  train  to  over 
take  her,  if  possible.  He  reached  Grand  Gulf  and 
looked  up  the  river.  There  was  the  "Arkansas" 
on  the  Louisiana  shore.  Drawing  nearer  her  every 
moment,  was  her  old  antagonist,  the  "Essex."  A 
great  cloud  of  white  smoke  sprang  up  in  the  air, 
a  dull  heavy  report  followed.  The  cloud  rolled 
away.  The  "Essex"  was  there  alone. 

So  passed  away  the  "Arkansas,"  whose  decks 
had  never  been  pressed  by  the  foot  of  an  emeny. 
Lieutenant  Stevens,  finding  his  boat  hopelessly 
aground,  with  a  merciless  antagonist  on  his  star 
board  quarter,  ordered  his  men  into  the  boats, 
bade  them  make  for  the  Louisiana  shore  and 
alone,  with  the  roo-pound  shells  of  the  "Essex" 
crashing  through  her  side,  touched  a  train  to  the 
magazine — jumped  into  the  river  and  was  heard 
of  no  more.  A  few  minutes  later,  a  Confederate 
ensign  floated  down  across  the  "Essex's"  bow. 
For  the  first  time  in  its  history,  it  had  trailed  in 
the  presence  of  an  enemy. 


CIVIL  WAR  PAPERS 
NUMBER   FOUR 


VICKSBURG  VAGARIES. 
A  Reminiscent  Address  given  by 
Eliot  Callender  before  the  Farragut 
Naval  Veterans*  Association,  at  the 
Palmer  House,  Chicago,  May  19, 


HERE  are  certain  scenes  or  incidents 
of  our  younger  years,  that  from  some 
unexplainable  cause  fasten  themselves 
upon  our  memory  to  the  exclusion, 
perhaps,  of  all  others  of  far  more  mo 
ment.  While,  during  the  three  years  of  my  life 
spent  in  service  in  the  Civil  War,  many  stirring 
events  occurred,  there  is  nothing  that  comes  back 
so  clearly  and  distinctly  to  my  memory,  as  the 
months  which  I  spent  around  Vicksburg.  Whether 
this  arises  from  the  enforced  idleness  of  blockade 
duty  giving  one  more  time  to  think,  and  im 
pressing  more  strongly  the  incidents  of  a  stirring 
nature,  which  from  time  to  time  occurred  there;  or, 
from  the  fact  that  I  served  through  two  Vicksburg 
campaigns:  one  during  the  summer  of  1862,  when 
Williams  made  his  unsuccessful  attempt  upon  that 
stronghold,  and  then  again  later  during  the  Grant 
and  Sherman  regime. 

I  have  called  this  paper  "Vicksburg  Vagaries," 
because  it  is  at  best  only  an  effort  to  string  upon 
the  thread  of  memory  the  impressions  made  dur 
ing  these  two  campaigns.  It  will  attempt  to  give 
no  history  of  the  Whys  and  Wherefores  of  the 
various  movements  made,  but  simply  the  incidents 
and  scenes  that  an  impressionable  nature,  not  yet 
guilty  of  whiskers,  succeeded  in  carrying  away 
with  it  into  future  years. 

As  the  insect  of  the  summer  night,  attracted 
by  the  glow  of  the  lamp,  flies  toward  it  but  to 
burn  its  wings  and  fly  away  again,  and  dazed,  in 
spite  of  experiences  scorches  its  wings  again  and 
again;  so,  through  two  long  summers,  the  great 
cupola  of  the  Court  House  on  the  hills  of  Vicks- 


burg  shone  like  some  great  beacon  lamp,  which 
we  approached  first  from  one  side  and  then  from 
another,  and  then  from  still  another,  taking  a  hurt 
at  each  attempt,  scorched  every  time  we  tried  to 
reach  it,  yet,  as  if  impelled  by  fate,  a  few  weeks 
or  months  found  us  engaged  in  another  attempt 
to  reach  that  shining  dome,  but  alas!  with  the  same 
experience. 

I  have  seen  that  dome  glistening  under  the  rays 
of  the  summer  sun,  and  during  the  watches  of  the 
night,  I  have  seen  it  lightened  up  with  the  glare  of 
bursting  bombs.  Still  day  after  day  it  stood,  until 
it  became  an  emblem  to  me  of  Eternity.  Men 
might  come  and  men  might  go,  but  that  dome 
would  go  on  forever.  I  never  realized  till  during 
the  hours  of  meditation  that  I  put  in  watching 
that  Court  House  in  the  distance,  how  much 
was  expressed  by  that  trite  saying,  "So  near,  and 
yet  so  far."  Nor  did  I  always  escape  it  in  the 
hours  of  sleep,  for  often  when  that  blessed  day 
dawned  when  plum-duff  was  served  us,  so  heavy 
that  it  bent  our  forks  in  attempting  to  raise  it, 
have  I  waked  with  a  cold  sweat  standing  out  on 
my  forehead,  to  find  that  the  Court  House  dome, 
which  I  was  sure  was  resting  on  the  pit  of  my 
stomach,  had  proved  to  be  the  efforts  of  duff  try 
ing  to  assimilate  itself  with  my  rebellious  system. 
I  often  thought  that  if  Porter  could  have  loaded 
his  mortars  with  plum-duff  which  our  ship's  cook 
incubated,  Vicksburg  would  have  disappeared  long 
before  Grant  reached  it. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  a  soldier  captured  by 
the  Confederates  on  the  Black  Bayou  expedition, 
being  taken  by  the  colonel  of  the  rebel  regiment, 
and  asked  what  in  the  world  the  Yankees  were  try- 


ing  to  do  up  that  swamp.  He  was  informed  by  the 
Yankee  that  Grant  was  trying  to  reach  the  rear  of 
Vicksburg  that  way.  The  Confederate  officer  re 
plied,  "The  old  fool,  he  has  failed  on  three  plans 
already, — should  think  that  would  be  enough  for 
him."  Whereupon  the  Union  soldier  replied  that 
to  his  certain  knowledge,  Grant  had  thirty-seven 
other  distinct  and  separate  plans  for  taking  Vicks 
burg,  and  one  of  them  would  fetch  it  sure. 

I  was  part  and  parcel,  in  a  humble  way,  of  all 
of  the  plans,  excepting  the  one  that  was  success 
ful,  and  I  would  have  been  in  that,  had  our  boat 
operated  as  favorably  on  land  as  it  did  on  the 
water. 

One  of  the  most  distinctly  marked  incidents 
which  my  memory  has  stored  up,  was  the  attack 
made  on  Haines'  Bluff  on  the  Yazoo  in  the  sum 
mer  of  1862.  General  Sherman's  idea  was  for  the 
navy  to  attack  and  destroy  the  fortifications,  upon 
the  conclusion  of  which,  he  would  land  his  forces 
there  and  march  them  into  Vicksburg  on  high 
ground.  This  plan  was  mainly  successful,  with 
two  exceptions:  first,  the  navy  did  not  destroy  the 
fortifications,  and  second,  Sherman  did  not  get  his 
troops  on  high  ground.  But  we  had  one  of  the 
sharpest  battles  between  the  gunboats  and  the  forts 
that  I  was  called  upon  to  go  through  during  the 
War.  The  flagship  was  the  U.  S.  S.  "Benton," 
in  charge  of  Lieut.-Com.  Wm.  N.  Gwin,  one  of 
the  bravest  and  best  officers  in  the  United  States 
Navy,  and  one  of  the  most  strikingly  handsome 
men  I  ever  saw.  What  Hancock  was  to  the  army, 
Gwin  was  to  the  navy,  and  they  were  not  unlike  in 
their  personal  appearance.  I  never  will  forget  my 
sensations  as  signal  officer  of  the  "Benton,"  when 


I  stood  on  the  upper  deck  with  Gwin,  as  the  "Ben- 
ton"  glided  through  the  still,  glassy,  green  waters  of 
the  Yazoo,  almost  in  the  shadow  of  the  heights 
which  were  crowned  with  the  rebel  fortifications. 
The  explosion  of  our  I  i-inch  Dahlgrens  directly 
under  us,  nearly  shook  our  heads  off,  and  what 
they  failed  to  do  in  this  line,  I  was  morally  certain 
the  bursting  of  the  rebel  shells  over  our  heads 
would  complete.  There  are  more  pleasant  things 
than  standing  on  an  upper  deck  of  an  iron  clad, 
looking  up  at  the  flash  and  white  cloud  of  smoke 
from  a  gun  not  three  hundred  yards  away,  know 
ing  that  the  projectile  will  not  fail  to  hit  the  boat 
in  some  part,  and  wondering  if  the  particular  part 
is  where  you  are  at.  I  was  never  noted  for  my 
politeness,  but  the  lessons  I  took  that  morning  in 
bowing,  ducking  and  posing,  must  have  been  re 
markable.  Commander  Gwin  said  to  me,  "There 
is  no  use  dodging,  you  are  as  apt  to  dodge  into  the 
shell,  as  away  from  it."  This  was  rather  disheart 
ening  to  one  whose  intentions  were  so  well  meant 
as  mine.  Only  a  few  moments  elapsed  after  this 
remark,  before  a  shell  exploded  right  over  our 
heads,  and  a  great  section  hurled  down,  cut  off 
Commander  Gwin's  breast  as  clean  as  it  could  have 
been  done  with  a  butcher's  cleaver.  He  fell  to  the 
deck,  and  survived  but  a  few  hours.  I  was  glad  to 
notice,  not  long  since,  that  this  gallant  man's  name 
has  been  commemorated  in  one  of  the  new  torpedo 
boats  that  the  Government  has  just  built. 

At  the  breaking  out  of  the  War,  I  was  attend 
ing  the  Washington  University  in  the  city  of  St. 
Louis,  and  belonged  to  the  Debating  Society, 
which,  one  warm  day  in  the  early  Fall  of  1861, 
tackled  the  subject,  "Resolved,  that  it  is  the  duty 


of  the  young  men  of  Missouri  to  stand  by  the 
Federal  Government  in  the  present  crisis."  The 
result  of  the  evening's  debate  was,  that  we  who 
were  on  the  affirmative  badly  needed  a  Federal 
Government  to  stand  by  us.  The  leading  orator 
on  the  negative,  by  the  name  of  Carlisle,  was  a 
fiery,  untamed  fellow  at  that  time,  and  quite  un 
reconstructed.  The  judge  of  the  debate  thought 
best  to  reserve  his  decision,  and  the  adjournment 
of  the  Society  under  these  unsatisfactory  condi 
tions  left  no  way  open  but  for  the  disputants  to 
settle  the  matter  out  on  the  sidewalk.  There  was 
no  lack  of  material  in  that  neighborhood  for  hair- 
mattresses  the  next  morning,  and  the  sacred  soil 
of  Missouri  absorbed  some  of  the  first  blood  of 
the  War. 

One  bright  morning,  during  the  Summer  of '63, 
a  flag  of  truce  came  up  in  a  row  boat  from  Vicks- 
burg,  and  I  was  ordered  by  our  captain  to  go  out 
and  meet  it.  Calling  away  the  cutter,  I  proceeded 
down  the  river,  and  as  I  drew  near  the  Confeder 
ate  boat  the  young  officer  seated  in  the  stern  had 
a  strangely  familiar  look  about  him.  Asking  his 
mission,  and  learning  that  it  was  relative  to  the 
passing  of  some  parties  north  through  our  lines, 
I  dropped  down  alongside  of  his  boat,  to  see  be 
fore  me  Sam  Carlisle,  the  leading  debater  on  the 
negative  side  on  the  eventful  night  at  Washington 
University.  Forgetting  my  surroundings,  I  ex 
claimed,  "Why  Sam,  old  fellow,  how  do  you  do," 
and  the  next  instant  I  would  have  been  shaking 
hands  with  him,  had  he  not  drawn  himself  up  to 
his  full  height,  saying,  "I  recognize  no  friends 
amongst  the  enemies  of  the  South."  I  then  wanted 
to  /irown  him,  but  he  was  protected  by  a  flag  of 


truce,  and  besides  looked  as  if  he  might  object  to 
my  taking  any  liberties  of  that  kind.  Poor  fel 
low,  his  fiery  blood  had  a  chance  to  cool  off,  for, 
with  the  courage  of  his  convictions,  he  gave  up  his 
young  life  not  long  after  that,  in  defence  of  what 
he  believed  was  the  right. 

In  this  connection,  it  appears  to  me  that  a  goodly 
portion  of  the  time  put  in  by  me  in  Uncle  Sam's 
service  was  spent  in  either  a  dingey  or  a  cutter.  If 
I  was  not  getting  out  of  trouble  in  one  of  these 
boats,  I  was  assuredly  getting  into  it.  A  heavy 
fog  rolled  down  the  river  one  afternoon,  so  dense 
that  objects  a  boat's  length  or  two  away,  were  not 
discernible.  Our  fleet  lay  along  the  Louisiana 
shore,  with  the  exception  of  one  vessel  anchored 
off  the  Mississippi  shore,  just  out  of  range  of  the 
upper  Confederate  battery.  Called  by  Captain 
Winslow  (who  afterwards  commanded  the  "Kear- 
sage),  I  was  ordered  to  take  a  communication  to 
the  commanding  officer  of  this  boat  on  the  east 
side  of  the  river.  Looking  out  of  the  port  hole, 
as  he  handed  me  the  letter,  the  captain  asked  me 
if  I  thought  I  could  find  that  boat  in  the  prevail 
ing  fog.  With  all  the  presumption  of  youth,  I 
answered  "Certainly,"  and  called  the  cutter  away. 
"What  an  absurd  question  for  the  captain  to  ask," 
I  thought,  for,  with  the  swift  current  running  down 
stream,  I  had  but  to  put  my  hand  over  the  side  of 
the  boat  and  feel  which  way  the  current  was  run 
ning,  and  keep  her  headed  straight  across  it.  A  few 
strokes  of  the  oars,  and  we  were  enveloped  in  the 
dense  fog  and  as  completely  shut  out  of  the  world 
as  if  we  alone  remained  in  it.  Then  the  brilliant 
youth  that  commanded  that  boat  learned  that  as 
long  as  it  was  propelled  by  the  oars,  there  would 


be  the  resistance  of  the  water,  no  matter  which 
way  he  was  going,  and  with  no  objects  on  either 
shore  visible,  it  was  not  possible  to  tell  whether 
he  was  going  north,  south,  east  or  west.  It  is  \in- 
necessary  to  add  that  compasses  were  not  in  use 
in  the  Mississippi  Squadron.  Well,  I  had  started 
in  the  right  direction,  of  a  necessity,  and  I  would 
hold  the  tiller  firm  and  bring  up  all  right,  leaving 
out  of  all  my  calculations  a  six-mile  current,  which, 
however,  attended  strictly  to  business  without  any 
help  on  my  part.  It  was  a  mile  straight  away  to 
the  point  of  my  destination,  and  pretty  soon  I 
ought  to  have  been  there,  but  I  wasn't.  Slowing 
up  a  little,  and  peering  through  the  fog,  it  seemed 
to  turn  red  and  yellow,  a  queer  phenomenon,  I 
thought.  Just  then,  clear  and  strong  out  of  the 
profound  silence  came  a  "Who's  there?"  and  the 
same  instant  the  red  and  yellow  phenomenon! 
materialized  into  a  camp-fire,  with  a  dark  object 
between  it  and  us,  holding  a  gun.  We  were  below 
the  upper  battery  of  the  Confederates,  and  about 
landing  into  the  arms  of  our  friend  the  Enemy. 
As  I  had  no  instructions  from  the  captain  to  land 
and  capture  Vicksburg,  I  whispered  "Back  water," 
stopped  the  progress  of  the  cutter,  and  we  got  just 
one  shot  as  a  salute  from  the  sentry,  as  we  bent  to 
our  oars,  and  disappeared  in  the  fog.  We  pro 
ceeded  fully  half  a  mile  up  stream  without  finding 
the  vessel  we  were  after,  and  started  back,  to  land 
again  fully  half  a  mile  below  our  own  boat  on  the 
point  directly  opposite  Vicksburg.  A  half  hour 
afterward  the  fog  lifted,  and  we  carried  out  our 
instructions  without  interfering  with  either  the 
Confederate  forts  or  forces. 

General  Sherman  never  seemed  to  get  it  out  of 


his  head  that  the  only  way  to  capture  Vicksburg, 
was  to  reach  it  on  the  north  side,  by  way  of  the 
Yazoo  River  and  the  Vicksburg  Hills,  which  ter 
minated  at  Haines'  Bluff  on  that  stream.  And  at 
this  time,  when  the  attention  of  every  one  is  so 
much  directed  to  the  subject  of  torpedoes,  my 
memory  often  runs  back  and  recalls  one  bright 
morning  when  an  expedition  under  command  of 
Lieut.-Com.  Thomas  O.  Selfredge,  who  but  a  few 
weeks  ago  was  put  on  the  retired  list  as  Admiral 
Selfredge,  was  proceeding  up  the  Yazoo.  The 
iron-clad  gunboat  "Cairo"  was  his  flagship,  and 
among  the  vessels  comprising  the  expedition  were 
two  or  three  light-draft  gunboats,  on  one  of  which, 
the  "Marmora,"  I  had  the  honor  to  serve.  We 
were  in  the  lead,  but  on  the  left  side  of  the  river, 
the  "Cairo"  being  on  the  right  side,  but  the  stream 
being  a  narrow  one,  we  were  not  far  apart.  As  we 
were  in  advance  we  kept  a  sharp  lookout  ahead, 
and  soon  discovered  evidences  of  torpedoes.  I 
never  saw  but  one  style  in  use  by  the  Confederates 
on  Western  waters.  This  was  a  metal  cylinder, 
from  four  to  six  feet  in  length,  anchored,  and  with 
a  long  slender  iron  rod  terminating  in  three  points, 
which  was  designed  to  reach  just  to  the  surface  of 
the  water. 

Seeing  one  of  the  unpleasant  objects  just  ahead 
of  us  anxiously  waiting  a  closer  acquaintance,  our 
boat  was  stopped,  eliciting  a  sharp  query  from  Com 
mander  Selfredge  on  the  "Cairo,"  as  to  why  we  did 
not  go  ahead.  Our  captain  sung  out  in  reply  that 
there  were  torpedoes  just  ahead  of  us.  Selfredge 
was  a  very  impetuous,  hot-headed  man,  and  the 
pre-emptory  order  came  back  to  "Go  ahead." 
"But  there  are  torpedoes  in  our  path,"  replied  our 


captain.  "Go  ahead,"  said  Selfredge,  "I  tell  you, 
go  ahead."  We  nailed  a  couple  of  short  cleats  on 
a  twelve-foot  sounding  pole  which  lay  in  our  fore 
castle  and  which  was  operated  by  two  or  three  men 
on  the  forecastle,  with  one  of  the  officers  at  the  bow 
giving  the  pilot  directions,  we  went  ahead  slowly, 
threading  our  way  among  the  projectiles.  Selfredge, 
as  if  to  give  our  captain  an  object  lesson,  started 
ahead  with  full  steam  with  the  "Cairo,"  and  in  less 
time  almost  than  it  takes  to  tell  it,  there  was  a  dull, 
heavy  report,  the  water  boiled  up  in  great  waves 
around  the  "Cairo's"  bow,  her  stern  raised  slightly, 
and  with  a  convulsive  shudder,  she  went  down  in 
about  ten  feet  of  water,  and  instead  of  picking  up 
torpedoes,  we  steamed  over  and  picked  up  the 
"Cairo's"  crew,  who  lost  no  time  in  getting  out 
on  the  upper  deck,  which  remained  six  or  eight 
inches  above  water. 

Since  that  time  and  scene,  which  will  never  be 
effaced  from  my  memory,  I  have  held  a  largely 
developed  apprehension  as  to  the  danger  and  de- 
structiveness  of  this  style  of  warfare,  which  has  not 
been  at  all  diminished  by  the  loss  of  our  splendid 
battleship  "Maine"  in  Havana  harbor.  I  never 
read  an  account  of  one  of  our  new  battleships, 
built  at  such  tremendous  expense,  that  it  does  not 
occur  to  me  that  a  miserable  one-horse  torpedo  or 
mine  is  all  that  is  necessary  to  remove  her  from  the 
sphere  of  existence, — thirteen-inch  guns,  Harvey- 
ized  armor,  dynamos,  electrical  equipment  and  all. 
The  thought  has  often  come  to  me,  how  quickly 
the  proudest  navy  in  the  world  could  be  demoral 
ized,  and  in  fact  exterminated,  with  this  infernal 
and  diabolical  modern  method  of  warfare.  A  kid 
once  said,  when  the  story  of  David  and  Goliath 


was  read  to  him  from  the  Bible,  that  he  didn't 
think  it  was  a  fair  fight,  anyway,  for  David  threw 
stones,  and  it  is  with  a  pang  of  regret  that  I  con 
template  that  the  old  days  are  gone  by  when  gal 
lantry  and  seamanship  and  pluck  were  the  factors 
that  decided  a  naval  conflict.  Like  the  kid,  it 
seems  to  me  that  it  is  not  a  fair  fight  when  a  ship 
is  sent  to  the  bottom,  perhaps  before  her  officers 
and  men  have  had  any  opportunity  to  show  what 
was  in  them.  Everything  that  we  eat,  wear,  and 
use  is  now  produced  by  machinery,  and  I  suppose 
we  ought  not  to  complain  if  our  righting  has  to  be 
done  in  the  same  way.  The  noble  old  Jack  Tar, 
celebrated  in  the  annals  of  our  navy,  both  in  prose 
and  song,  is  disappearing  from  view,  and  in  his 
place  comes  the  hard-handed  mechanic,  with  his 
oil  cup  and  monkey  wrench. 

Probably  the  same  pang  of  regret  ran  through 
our  navy,  when  the  white  sails  gave  way  to  me 
smoke  stack  and  boilers.  This  is  a  world  of 
changes,  and  I  suppose  the  feeling  comes  to  every 
one,  sooner  or  later,  that  he  is  getting  left  behind. 
But  we  little  like  to  admit  this  in  public,  even  if 
we  do  console  ourselves  in  the  privacy  of  our  room 
by  singing  in  our  hearts  that  old  ditty  of  our  fore 
fathers — 

"  Oh,  oh,  I  grieve,  I  grieve, 

For  the  good  old  days  of  Adam  and  Eve." 

The  discipline  in  the  Mississippi  Squadron  under 
Foote  and  Davis  was  something  terrible  to  contem 
plate.  With  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  officers  and 
men  taken  from  the  ranks  of  civil  life,  and  western 
civil  life  at  that,  the  other  twenty  per  cent,  had  its 
hands  full  in  attempting  to  leaven  the  rest.  Still 
the  work  went  on,  and  under  as  strict  a  discipli- 


narian  as  Admiral  Porter  advance  was  marked  and 
rapid.  It  is  a  wonder  that  Porter  did  not  die  of 
apoplexy  before  the  men  arrived  at  what  he  con 
sidered  a  proper  state  of  efficiency,  for  he  was  a 
very  choleric  man,  and  if  things  did  not  go  his  way 
at  the  drop  of  the  hat,  there  was  an  explosion. 

Very  strongly  impressed  on  my  memory  is  an 
incident  that  happened  in  the  Spring  of  '64,  when 
General  Grant  lay  at  Milliken's  Bend  with  his  entire 
army.  I  was  detailed  to  accompany  the  Admiral, 
who  desired  to  confer  with  the  General  on  some 
important  matter.  The  "Black  Hawk,"  which  was 
the  Admiral's  flagship,  lay  just  inside  the  mouth  of 
the  Yazoo  River,  while  General  Grant  had  his  head 
quarters  on  the  steamer  "Magnolia,"  which  lay 
several  miles  below  on  the  Louisiana  bank  of  the 
river. 

Proceeding  on  the  Admiral's  tug  down  the  river, 
we  soon  came  alongside  the  "Magnolia."  It  is  un 
necessary  to  state  that  the  Admiral  was  fully  uni 
formed,  and  I  had  all  on  me  that  the  law  allowed, or  I 
should  not  have  been  taken  along.  The  lower  deck 
ot  the  "Magnolia"  was  covered  with  soldiers,  some 
lying  asleep,  some  playing  cards,  and  about  all  of 
them  smoking  pipes.  There  was  no  sentry  on 
guard  to  receive  the  Admiral,  and  no  one  paid  any 
attention  to  him  beyond  looking  up  from  their 
game  when  the  tug  struck  the  side  of  the  boat. 
The  Admiral  got  red  behind  the  ears,  and  I 
thought  a  storm  of  the  first  magnitude  was  com 
ing.  The  Admiral  usually  opened  out  on  his 
subordinates  when  he  could  find  no  one  else  to 
listen  to  him,  but  on  this  occasion  his  feelings  were 
too  deep  for  utterance,  and  having  learned  from 
past  experience  with  him,  that  the  quieter  I  was 


the  safer  my  position,  I  meekly  fell  into  the 
Admiral's  rear,  and  clambered  off  the  tug  onto 
the  steamer.  We  walked  along  the  guards  toward 
the  front  of  the  boat,  stepping  over  some  soldiers 
and  around  others,  till  we  came  to  the  gangway 
leading  to  the  upper  deck.  The  scene  below  was 
repeated  above,  more  groups  of  soldiers  playing 
cards,  more  lying  around  asleep,  only  a  sentry  paced 
to  and  fro  in  front  of  the  cabin,  who  paid  no  more 
attention  to  us  than  if  we  had  been  two  sides  of  sole 
leather.  No  salute,  no  recognition  of  any  kind. 

The  Admiral  in  a  voice  hoarse  with  rage,  asked 
the  sentry  where  he  could  find  General  Grant.  The 
sentry  pointed  over  his  shoulder  as  he  walked  past 
us,  toward  the  cabin,  which  was  the  only  answer  to 
the  Admiral's  query.  We  entered  the  cabin,  which 
was  divested  of  furniture,which  probably  accounted 
for  the  position  of  the  soldiers  on  the  floor  engaged 
in  the  same  occupations  as  those  on  the  outside 
deck  and  the  deck  below.  A  group  right  in  front 
of  us,  was  in  the  very  midst  of  a  very  exciting 
game,  for  one  of  the  boys  rose  up  part  way  as  we 
entered,  and  slamming  a  card  down  upon  the 
floor,  sang  out,  "High,  low,  Jack  and  the  game, 
by  G-d!" 

One  would  have  thought  that  this  information, 
so  very  enthusiastically  conveyed,  would  have 
moved  the  Admiral's  ruffled  feelings,  but  he  had 
his  chin  so  high  in  the  air  by  this  time,  that  I  was 
afraid  it  would  lift  his  feet  off  the  floor.  Passing 
through  the  front  cabin,  we  came  to  the  sliding 
doors  that  shut  off  what  was  called  the  "Ladies' 
Cabin"  on  Mississippi  River  steamboats.  Here, 
another  sentry  paced  to  and  fro,  but  he  had  left  all 
his  salutes,  as  well  as  the  knowledge  of  making 


them,  at  home.  But  he  was  better  than  his  com 
rade  on  the  front  of  the  boat,  for  when  asked  by 
the  Admiral  for  General  Grant,  he  opened  the 
sliding  doors  wide  enough  for  the  Admiral  and 
myself  to  squeeze  through,  and  over  at  the  end  of 
the  cabin,  sitting  in  his  shirt  sleeves,  hard  at  work 
at  his  desk,  was  Major-General  U.  S.  Grant,  Com 
mander  of  the  United  States  forces  at  Vicksburg. 
Half  a  dozen  or  more  officers  were  lounging  around 
on  the  sofas  and  chairs,  but  I  do  not  remember  that 
one  rose  to  greet  us,  or  pay  us  any  attention. 

The  General  looked  up  from  his  desk,  with 
a  hearty  "Hello,  Admiral,  glad  to  see  you,  take  a 
chair,"  which  I  will  do  the  army  justice  to  say,  was 
furnished  more  or  less  promptly  by  one  of  the 
General's  staff.  In  a  few  moments,  the  General 
was  through  his  writing,  and  turning  around  to 
the  Admiral,  was  ready  for  business. 

The  curtain  now  rises  on  a  scene  some  two 
weeks  later.  The  General  came  to  the  flagship 
on  a  little  despatch  boat  used  by  him.  No  notice 
had  been  sent  of  his  coming.  He  just  came  in  his 
own  artless,  General-Grant-kind-of-a-way.  He 
had  not  approached  within  two  hundred  yards  of 
the  "Black  Hawk"  before  the  air  was  rent  with  the 
shrill  piping  of  the  boatswain's  whistle,  and  as  the 
despatch  boat  came  alongside  of  the  "Black 
Hawk,"  six  side  boys  lined  either  side  of  the 
gangway,  with  their  hands  to  their  caps.  The  offi 
cer  of  the  deck  received  him  at  the  end  of  the  pass 
age  so  formed  by  these  side  boys,  and  together  the 
officer  of  the  deck  and  the  General  passed  up  the 
companionway  between  two  files  of  blue  jackets, 
all  saluting,  and  were  received  at  the  head  of  the 
stairs  by  the  fleet  captain,  who  conveyed  him 


through  the  cabin  to  the  Admiral's  headquarters, 
and  they  passed  not  a  man  nor  an  officer,  from  the 
time  the  General  entered  the  boat  until  he  left  it, 
whose  hat  was  not  raised. 

Now,  candor  compels  me  to  state,  that  the  Gen 
eral  looked  about  as  much  bored  at  all  this  cere 
mony  as  the  Admiral  had  looked  at  the  lack  of 
it  on  his  visit  of  two  weeks  previous.  This  little 
incident  illustrates  the  difference  between  these  two 
heroes  of  the  War.  One  free  and  easy,  indifferent 
to  all  form  and  ceremony;  the  other  would  almost 
rather  overlook  a  breach  of  patriotism  than  he 
would  a  breach  of  etiquette. 

The  watches  stood  through  two  campaigns  left 
a  great  many  enduring  impressions  on  my  mind. 
I  doubt  if  anything  in  the  War  rivalled  in  pic- 
turesqueness  and  interest,  the  scenes  above  Vicks- 
burg  in  the  summer  days  of  '62. 

I  watched  the  "Carondelet"  in  the  early  morn 
ing  hours,  as  she  departed  on  her  mission  of  cap 
turing  and  destroying  the  "Arkansas,"  and  saw  her 
come  back  a  few  hours  later,  all  but  captured  and 
destroyed  herself.  I  watched  the  "Hartford"  that 
same  day,  after  the  "Arkansas"  had  successfully 
passed  the  united  fleets  and  was  tied  to  the  shore 
at  Vicksburg,  and  saw  her  men  at  work  raising  and 
fastening  a  huge  anchor  over  near  the  extreme  end 
of  her  mainyard,  little  knowing  the  plans  that  were 
going  through  stern  old  Admiral  Farragut's  mind. 
I  saw  her  drop  down  the  river  under  the  darkness 
of  night,  followed  by  the  "Essex,"  in  their  vain 
attempt  to  destroy  the  rebel  craft  which  had  thrown 
such  an  insulting  gauntlet  at  the  feet  of  our  navy. 
That  anchor  out  on  her  mainyard  was  designed 
to  be  dropped  through  the  upper  deck  of  the 


"Arkansas,"  and  undoubtedly  would  have  done 
so,  had  the  Admiral  succeeded  in  getting  alongside 
of  her.  They  found  her  in  a  little  cove  which  was 
a  better  protection  to  her  than  all  the  batteries  of 
Vicksburg. 

And  more  than  once  have  I  seen  the  dark  hours 
of  the  night  lighted  up  by  a  most  incessant  flash  of 
battery  after  battery  from  the  earth  works  below, 
to  the  forts  on  the  heights  above,  and  from  north 
to  south  three  miles  in  extent,  a  living  fire  upon 
our  fleet  as  they  ran  that  supposedly  impregnable 
position.  Then,  more  than  ever,  the  gilded  dome 
of  the  Court  House  shone  like  an  angel  of  death, 
and  the  air  trembled  with  the  roar  of  a  hundred 
pieces  of  heavy  artillery.  Now  the  flash  from  the 
guns  was  held  by  the  lurid  light  leaping  into  the 
heavens  from  a  burning  boat,  as  she  dropped  out 
of  line  and  drifted  aimlessly  down  the  river. 

What  a  volume  it  would  make  were  all  the  in 
cidents  and  events  which  centered  in  and  around 
Vicksburg  from  first  to  last  recorded  of  the  army 
and  navy,  from  the  time  General  Williams  started 
to  cut  his  little  canal  across  from  the  point  opposite 
the  city,  to  the  time  when  General  Grant  proposed, 
in  lieu  of  unconditional  surrender,  to  move  im 
mediately  upon  their  works! 

Then,  what  a  glorious  Fourth  of  July  was  that 
in  1863,  when  the  glad  news,  rushing  westward 
from  Gettysburg,  that  Lee's  army  was  fleeing 
homeward,  shattered  and  broken,  was  met  midway 
by  the  news  speeding  eastward  that  Vicksburg,  the 
last  hold  of  the  Confederacy  on  the  Father  of 
Waters,  was  resting  under  the  Stars  and  Stripes. 
Ever  memorable  day! 

A  child  was  born  in  the  family  of  Nations  July 


4th,  1776.  The  world  recognized,  July  4th,  1863, 
that  it  had  reached  man's  estate,  not  only  com 
petent  to  manage  its  own  affairs,  but  with  the 
strength  and  virility  to  help  others  not  so  fortu 
nately  situated. 


SHORT  ADDRESSES 


NUMBER  ONE 

OPENING  ADDRESS,  Memorial  Day, 
1899,  at  Springdale  Cemetery,  given  by 
Eliot  Callender,  President  of  the  Day. 


O  the  survivor  of  the  great  Civil  War, 
these  memorial  services  have  an  effect 
which  no  one  else  can  appreciate.  To 
the  large  majority  of  this  audience,  the 
great  war  is  simply  a  matter  of  history.  To  many 
who  lived  through  those  days,  it  is  more  than  a 
matter  of  history,  it  is  like  an  awful  dream  which 
they  would  like  to  efface  from  memory.  But  to 
the  survivors  of  the  G.  A.  R.,  Memorial  Day 
brings  up  afresh  the  sad  and  exciting  experiences 
of  days  gone  by. 

Those  graves  in  yonder  lot,  my  friends,  have, 
we  believe,  more  than  passing  interest  to  you,  or 
you  would  not  be  here  to-day.  For  those  head 
stones  mark  to  us  the  last  resting  place  of  those 
whose  shoulders  touched  ours  in  the  long  marches, 
whose  voices  mingled  with  ours  in  the  din  of  battle, 
who  slept  by  our  sides  during  the  long  hours  of  the 
night,  with  nothing,  perhaps,  but  a  blanket  between 
us  and  the  stars  of  heaven. 

There  is,  perhaps,  to  each  of  you,  a  grave  some 
where  in  this  beautiful  cemetery,  precious  to  you 
because  it  is  the  last  resting  place  of  one  near  and 
dear.  Such  a  feeling  comes  to  every  veteran  as  he 
gazes  upon  the  mound  which  covers  the  remains 
of  a  comrade.  And  so  I  say,  to  those  of  us  who 
were  active  participants  in  that  great  conflict,  there 


is  a  depth  and  a  solemnity  to  these  memorial  exer 
cises,  which  no  one  else  can  appreciate,  and  it  fills 
our  hearts  with  gratitude  and  joy  to  see  the  young 
and  the  old,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  great  and 
the  small,  turning  out  at  these  memorial  services, 
to  do  honor  to  the  memory  of  our  departed,  and 
by  so  doing  expressing  the  same  loyalty  to  the 
country  and  the  flag  which  caused  these  brave  com 
rades  of  ours  to  lay  down  their  lives. 

And  our  hearts  warm  toward  this  noble  Asso 
ciation  of  ladies,  organized  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
War.  They  cared  for  us  who  were  at  the  front, 
and  they  cared  for  those  we  left  behind.  The 
War  over,  they  have  the  honor  and  memory  of 
those  who  laid  down  their  lives,  in  their  keeping. 
This  beautiful  carpet  of  green  that  covers  our  de 
parted  comrades,  will  soon  fade  into  the  sere  and 
brown  of  fall  and  the  death  of  winter,  but  in  no 
month  of  the  year,  in  no  year  of  the  past  thirty- 
eight,  when  in  the  heart  of  the  Ladies'  Memorial 
Association  the  soldier's  grave  was  not  green,  and 
flowers  strewn  over  his  mound;  and  the  veteran 
turns  with  pride  and  hope  to  the  splendid  speci 
mens  of  American  manhood  that  have  come  to  the 
front  in  these  latter  days.  Like  the  warriors  who 
sprang  from  the  dragon's  teeth  that  Cadmus  sowed, 
it  would  seem  as  if  from  the  blood-soaked  soil  ot 
the  Republic  struggling  for  its  very  life,  there  had 
come  a  race  ready  and  willing  to  hold  up  the  Stars 
and  Stripes  against  the  whole  world  if  needs  be. 

In  one  of  the  crises  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
when  the  enemies  of  Rome  were  almost  thunder 
ing  at  her  gates,  a  little  girl  and  her  grandfather 
were  watching  the  march  of  soldiers  hurrying  to 
the  front, — a  column  of  old  battle-scarred  veterans, 


every  man  of  whom  had  earned  honors  in  many 
hard  contest  for  his  native  land.  At  their 
head,  one  carried  a  banner  with  the  inscription, 
"We  have  been  brave."  "Surely,"  said  the 
little  girl,  "we  need  not  fear,  see  all  those  old 
soldiers;  they  know  how  to  fight  and  will  drive 
our  enemies  all  away."  But  the  old  man  shook 
his  head,  saying,  "Truly,  my  child,  they  do 
know  how  to  fight,  and  they  will  not  run  away; 
but  see,  some  are  lame,  and  some  are  stiff,  and  all 
are  old.  The  enemy  will  soon  tire  them,  and 
their  battle  will  not  be  for  long."  Then  on  came 
a  column  of  young  men,  marching  along  with 
elastic  step,  eagerness  and  determination  in  their 
faces,  and  at  their  head  a  banner  with  the  inscript 
ion,  "We  will  be  brave."  The  little  girl  clapped 
her  hands,  and  cried,  "What  do  you  say  ot  these, 
grandfather?"  The  old  veteran's  eyes  brightened 
as  he  looked  at  the  sturdy  forms  passing  by,  and 
said,  "Let  us  go  home  and  rest  in  peace,  my  child. 
Our  land  is  safe  with  such  as  these." 

I  will  now  call  on  a  worthy  representative  of 
this  advance  guard  of  American  hope  and  pride, 
Rev.  S.  H.  Moore,  of  Peoria,  the  orator  of  the 
day. 


NUMBER  TWO 

ADDRESS  by  Eliot  Callender,  Patriotic 
Service,  First  Presbyterian  Church,  Peoria, 
Illinois. 


HE  two  best  known  expressions  that 
have  come  to  us  from  the  War,  are 
probably  General  Grant's  "Fighting  it 
out  on  this  line  if  it  takes  all  summer," 
and  "Let  us  have  peace."  It  was  a  quiet,  almost 
a  silent  man  who  said  this,  but  everyone  knew  and 
felt  that  there  was  not  only  sincerity  in  the  words, 
but  that  all  the  force  of  a  mighty  character  was 
behind  it.  Our  Southern  foes  knew  when  Grant's 
determination  reached  them,  that  it  simply  meant 
a  survival  of  the  fittest  or  strongest, — they  knew 
that  blood  would  flow  like  water,  and  North  and 
South  the  expression  was  not  infrequent  of  "Beast 
and  Butcher."  But  because  he  did  fight  it  out, 
because  blood  did  flow  like  water,  that  silent  man 
was  enabled  to  say  a  little  later  on,  "Let  us  have 
peace."  Grant  and  Foote  were  types  of  soldier 
Christians.  May  we  not  use  them  tonight  as  types 
of  Christian  soldiers  to  whom  the  instruction  comes, 
"Let  us,  therefore,  follow  after  the  things  which 
make  for  peace,  and  those  things  whereby  one  may 
edify  another."  The  true  soldier  is  a  peace-maker, 
and  not  a  peace-breaker.  Because  peace  was  broken 
in  1 86 1,  the  call  for  volunteers  was  made  that  peace 
might  be  restored.  Grant  and  Foote  and  Farragut 
fought  for  peace,  and  the  silent  commander's  whole 
heart  was  in  those  words,  "Let  us  have  peace." 


My  friends,  our  numbers  are  few  here  tonight 
who  fought  in  the  great  Civil  Strife,  but  there  isn't 
one  here,  young  or  old,  who  hasn't  all  the  battle 
on  his  hands  that  he  can  stand  up  under.  We 
wrestle,  not  against  flesh  and  blood,but  against  prin 
cipalities  and  powers,  against  spiritual  wickedness  in 
high  places,  against  the  prince  of  the  power  of  dark 
ness,  and  "Let  him  that  thinketh  he  standeth,  take 
heed  lest  he  fall."  Paul  exhausts  the  power  of  lan 
guage  in  depicting  this  great  strife,  and  the  necessity 
of  preparing  for  it,  and  having  prepared,  to  put  up 
the  best  fight  that  in  us  lies.  "Put  on  the  helmet 
of  salvation  and  the  breast-plate  of  righteousness, 
armed  with  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  which  is  the 
word  of  God.  Put  on  the  whole  armor  of  God, 
and  having  done  all, — stand."  Not  lie  down,  not 
run  away;  but  stand  and  fight,  and  fight  just  as 
Grant  and  Foote  fought  for  peace;  not,  perhaps, 
a  peace  from  trouble,  but  a  peace  in  trouble,  a 
peace  that  can  only  come  to  the  Christian  soldier, 
clad  in  the  armor  of  God,  and  sustained  and  sup 
ported  by  His  Almighty  Power.  "Thou  wilt  give 
him  perfect  peace  whose  mind  is  stayed  on  Thee," 
a  "peace  that  passeth  understanding,"  a  peace  that 
is  worth  more  than  all  the  perishing  things  of  this 
life,  that  can  gather  around  us. 

A  soldier  of  the  Crimea  was  being  carried  off 
the  field  of  battle  by  his  comrades.  "Lay  me 
down,"  he  said,  "and  go  back,  I  am  wounded  to 
death.  It  is  useless  to  spend  time  on  me."  They 
laid  him  down  and  left  him,  but  a  kindhearted  offi 
cer  came  across  him,  and  said,  "My  poor  fellow, 
can  I  do  anything  for  you?"  "Nothing,"  was  the 


reply.     "Can  I  not  get  you  some  water?" 
I  thank  you,"  the  dying  soldier  said.    "Can  I 


"No, 
not 


send  word  home  to  your  friends?"  "No,"  came 
the  reply,  "I  have  no  friends  that  you  can  reach; 
but,"  he  said,  "if  you  look  in  my  knapsack,  you 
will  find  a  Testament.  Open  it  at  the  fourteenth 
chapter  of  John,  and  along  toward  the  end  of  the 
chapter,  you  will  find  a  verse  marked;  read  it  to 
me."  The  officer  complied,  and  read  the  words: 
"Peace  I  leave  with  you;  My  peace  I  give  unto 
you.  Not  as  the  world  giveth,  give  I  unto  you. 
Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled,  neither  let  it  be 
afraid."  A  smile,  lighted  from  above,  passed  over 
the  soldier's  face.  "I  have  that  peace,"  he  said; 
and  his  spirit  fled  to  God,  who  gave  it. 


NUMBER  THREE 

WHAT  IS  THE  WOMEN'S  RELIEF 
CORPS  DOING  FOR  THE  G.  A.  R.? 
ADDRESS  given  by  Eliot  Callender  at  the 
Camp-Fire  of  the  Women's  Relief  Corps, 
on  the  Occasion  of  the  Fourteenth  District 
Convention,  1899. 

,HAT  is  the  Women's  Relief  Corps 
doing  for  the  G.  A.  R.?  In  answering 
that  question,  we  are  not  all  at  a  loss, 
as  was  the  aged  darkey,  who  had  been 
stricken  with  a  very  severe  illness,  and 
had  come  so  near  the  point  of  death  that  the  doctor 
was  making  three  visits  a  day;  but  on  visiting  his 
patient  one  morning,  he  found  a  great  and  radical 
change  had  taken  place  for  the  better,  and  the 
patient  was  on  the  sure  road  to  recovery.  He  said 
to  him,  "Sam,  you  are  so  much  better  this  morn 
ing,  that  I  will  not  be  obliged  to  call  again  before 
to-morrow;  but  for  fear  you  might  have  a  little 
pain  in  the  interim,  I  will  leave  this  prescription." 
After  the  doctor  had  gone,  Sam  called  in  a  feeble 
voice  to  his  wife,  who  was  in  an  adjoining  room, 
"Dinah,  da's  a  'scription  on  de  table,  what  de 
doctah  lef ;  it's  for  my  interum;  please  take  it  to 
de  drug  store  and  ask  de  man  whether  I  is  to  take 
it  eternally,  or  jus'  rub  it  on  de  outside,  an'  if  so, 
whar." 

He  didn't  know  the  exact  place  where  he  was  go 
ing  to  be  benefitted,  but  we  do.  The  work  of  the 
Relief  Corps  for  the  G.  A.  R.  covers  us  in  every 


way,  and — like  a  Jersey  shirt — clings  to  us  just  as 
much  in  one  place  as  another;  and  if  we  are  cold 
and  weak  in  any  one  place,  that  is  just  where  the 
Relief  Corps  is  on  hand,  in  its  ministering  mercy 
and  applying  relief. 

And  look  at  its  vitality!  I  have  watched  our 
own  local  Corps  with  unfeigned  admiration;  noth 
ing  downs  it  or  discourages  it.  I  have  known 
them  to  have  lawn  teas,  with  no  lawn  to  have  them 
on;  they  have  had  successful  steamboat  excursions 
up  the  river,  when  there  was  so  little  water  that  the 
boat  raised  a  cloud  of  dust  as  it  moved  off;  they 
have  had  entertainments  gotten  up  at  considerable 
expense,  where  the  weather,  or  something  else, 
knocked  out  the  attendance,  and  any  other 
organization  would  have  gone  broke — but  not 
they — instead  of  that,  they  first  paid  all  their 
bills,  then  declared  a  dividend  out  of  the  balance, 
and  then  had  money  left  to  turn  into  the  Relief 
Fund  of  the  Post. 

If  the  spiritual  condition  of  the  city  was  low 
and  the  churches  neglected,  they  would  get  up  card 
parties  to  get  money  away  from  the  ungodly  and 
put  it  to  some  good  purpose.  If  a  revival  should 
break  out  in  this  city,  I  would  expect  to  see  our 
Relief  Corps  advertising  "Converts'  Chicken  Cro 
quettes, —  nothing  but  real  Methodist  chickens 
used";  and  what  the  ladies  are  going  to  do  when 
they  get  to  that  better  land,  where  there  is  no  sick 
ness  or  sorrow,  and  no  one  needs  help,  I  don't 
know. 

I  will  give  way  to  no  man  in  America  in  the 
matter  of  respect  for  the  Women's  Relief  Corps, 
and  the  more  I  am  brought  into  contact  with  it, 
the  better  I  know  it,  the  more  I  respect  and  love 


it.  Heretofore,  I  have  loved  it  for  the  good  it 
has  done,  but  now  I  am  growing  a  wholesome 
respect  for  it  as  the  most  powerful  organization 
amongst  the  patriotic  societies  of  America.  I 
speak  advisedly. 

You  may  talk  as  you  please  about  the  G.  A.  R., 
the  Military  Order  of  the  Loyal  Legion,  the  Sons 
of  Veterans,  and  other  patriotic  organizations,  but 
the  Women's  Relief  Corps  stands  to-day,  the  first 
in  strength,  in  life,  and  in  its  resources.  With  its 
four  thousand  organizations,  expending  last  year 
$  1 60,000  in  charity,  and  $19,000,000  since  its 
organization,  where  will  you  find  its  equal  in 
strength  and  vitality?  With  an  active  member 
ship  of  1 50,000,  it  is  growing;  while,  Comrades  of 
the  G.  A.  R.,  in  the  natural  order  of  things,  we  are 
diminishing.  As  was  said  this  afternoon,  the  G. 
A.  R.  brings  to  the  Relief  Corps,  nothing;  while 
the  Relief  Corps  brings  to  us,  everything. 

The  great  tie  that  binds  the  G.  A.  R.  is  the  one 
of  comradeship;  no  one  outside  of  the  Order  can 
appreciate  the  thrill  that  goes  over  the  old  soldier 
as  he  meets  and  grasps  the  hand  of  one  who  was 
a  partner  in  all  the  vicissitudes  of  that  awful  war; 
who  trudged  with  him  in  the  long  hours  of  the 
weary  march;  who  lay  with  him  during  the  long 
hours  of  the  night,  with  the  damp  sod  for  a  mat 
tress  and  the  stars  for  a  covering;  who  drank  with 
him  from  the  same  canteen;  who  exchanged  ex 
periences  with  him,  perhaps  in  rebel  prisons,  or  in 
adjoining  cots  in  the  same  hospital. 

Comrade  Schimpff,  who  belongs  to  a  number  of 
societies,  said  in  this  hall  once,  that  he  knew  of 
none  whose  ties  were  so  strong  as  those  of  the 
G.  A.  R.  But  there  is  a  new  tie  forming  and 


growing  stronger  every  day  in  the  G.  A.  R.  It 
will  not  supplant  the  other,  but  it  will  grow  along 
with  it.  It  is  a  tie  born  of  women's  love,  tender 
ness,  and  sympathy,  and  it  holds  the  G.  A.  R.  and 
the  Women's  Relief  Corps  together  in  bonds  that 
the  extinction  of  the  G.  A.  R.  alone  will  sever,  and 
then  it  will  take  up  our  sons  and  do  for  them  what 
it  has  already  done  for  us. 


NUMBER  FOUR 

ADDRESS  given  by  Eliot  Callender  at 
Installation  of  Sons  of  Veterans,  January, 
1900. 

the  early  days  of  the  Civil  War,  a 
small  force  which  we  had  at  Lexington, 
Mo.,  after  a  sharp  conflict,  surrended  to 
General  Price  with  largely  superior  num 
bers.  General  Price  detailed  a  number 
of  his  officers  to  search  amongst  the  captured 
Union  soldiers  for  ammunition,  of  which  the  Con 
federate  army  was  very  much  in  need.  An  Irish 
adjutant,  by  the  name  of  Cosgrove,  was  interro 
gated  by  one  of  these  officers,  as  to  whether  or  not 
his  command  had  any  ammunition,  and  if  so,  where 
it  was.  "Bedad,  sir,"  said  Cosgrove,  "all  the  am 
munition  we  had,  we  give  to  you  before  we  sur 
rendered,  and  if  we  had  any  more,  we  would  have 
given  it  to  you  before  now." 

I  been  have  asked  so  often  to  address  the  Sons 
of  Veterans,  that  I  am  quite  sure  I  am  in  the 
same  position  as  the  adjutant,  and  have  given  you 
all  I  had  on  previous  occasions,  but  I  am  glad  of 
an  opportunity  to  meet  with  you  this  evening,  and 
still  more  glad  to  see  there  are  lots  of  Bryner  Post 
that  feel  as  I  do.  No  one  can,  or  ought  to  be 
more  interested  in  the  Sons  of  Veterans,  than  the 
members  of  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic,  for 
if  we  have  done  anything  that  should  live  in  the 
future,  it  is  only  through  the  Sons  of  Veterans  and 
the  Ladies'  Relief  Corps  that  it  will  be  cherished 
and  kept  alive  in  the  years  to  come. 


I  listened  to  a  very  interesting  sermon  last  Sun 
day  morning,  on  the  relations  of  the  old  year  just 
expired,  to  the  new  one  which  we  are  entering,  and 
the  text  was  taken  from  the  words  of  the  old 
priest,  Simeon,  when  in  the  temple,  the  Infant 
Saviour  was  brought  in:  "Lord,  now  lettest  Thou 
Thy  servant  depart  in  peace,  for  my  eyes  have 
seen  the  glory  of  the  Lord." 

Yesterday  is  history,  tomorrow  is  hope,  and  their 
only  meeting  place  is  in  the  to-day.  Simeon  repre 
sented  a  day  and  generation  that  was  past;  the  In 
fant  Saviour,  one  that  was  to  come:  so  the  old 
year  drops  out,  and  the  new  year  comes  in;  the 
one  has  become  history,  and  the  other,  hope. 

And  it  strikes  me,  my  young  friends,  as  a  fit 
ting  illustration  of  the  relations  existing  between 
the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic  and  the  Sons  of 
Veterans.  Our  day  has  gone,  we  live  but  in 
memory;  gone  are  the  days  of  the  camp-fire,  the 
dreary  marches,  the  roar  of  artillery,  and  the  rattle 
of  musketry,  the  laying  on  our  arms  in  the  snow 
and  storm  by  night,  the  midnight  alarms,  the  shout 
of  combat;  we  shall  no  longer  look  upon  the  up 
turned  faces  of  our  dead  on  the  field  of  battle,  nor 
carry  our  wounded  comrades  in  our  arms.  That 
is  now  history, — glorious  history,  you  may  say, — 
but  it  is  all  of  yesterday,  and  to-day  we  stand  be 
fore  you  Sons  of  Veterans,  who  are  our  tomorrow, 
our  hope,  and  our  pride.  Yours  the  reveille,  call 
ing  you,  full  of  the  strength  of  young  manhood, 
to  fight  the  battle  of  life.  For  us,  taps  are  sound 
ing  over  the  valley,  and  the  time  of  our  rest  is  at 
hand. 

All  over  this  broad  land  have  been  erected  mag 
nificent  monuments  to  the  memory  of  those  who 


upheld  our  country's  flag  in  its  hour  of  supreme 
peril;  we  have  one  in  our  own  Court  House  yard 
that  is  the  peer  of  any  of  them,  in  design,  grace 
fulness,  and  beauty.  But  the  best  monuments 
to  the  boys  in  blue  will  not  be  found  in  marble 
shafts  and  bronze  statues,  no  matter  how  costly  or 
beautiful,  but  in  the  brave  and  loyal  hearts  of  our 
boys,  the  Sons  of  Veterans. 

You  are  our  hope,  you  are  our  tomorrow,  in 
you  we  live  again.  The  principles  for  which  we 
fought,  you  will  fight  for,  if  necessary;  the  flag  we 
followed  so  proudly,  is  the  flag  you  have  sworn  to 
protect;  the  work  we  have  done,  you  have  taken 
up,  and  no  insult  or  dishonor  to  that  beautiful  ban 
ner  of  liberty  will  ever  go  unpunished  as  long  as  a 
son  of  a  veteran  is  left. 

Old  Simeon,  with  his  heart  full  of  joy,  took  the 
Infant  Saviour  in  his  arms  and  blessed  him,  and 
so  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic,  as  it  looks 
with  pride  on  the  stalwart  and  growing  ranks  of 
the  Sons  of  Veterans,  extends  its  "God  bless  you 
and  keep  you." 


NUMBER  FIVE 

INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AS  COM 
MANDER  OF  BRYNER  POST,  De 
livered  by  Eliot  Callender,  January,  1897. 


'LLOW  me  to  extend  to  my  comrades  of 
Bryner  Post,  my  sincere  thanks  for  the 
trust  and  confidence  they  have  seen  fit 

to  repose,  by  calling  me  to  the  position 

of  Commander  of  this  Post.  In  accepting  the 
same,  I  can  but  say  that  whatever  lies  in  me  shall 
be  yours  for  the  welfare  of  the  Post,  during  the 
year  we  are  just  entering.  Never  was  responsible 
position  bestowed  where  the  recipient  felt  more  un 
worthy,  or  was  more  conscious  how  far  he  would 
fall  short  of  rising  to  the  wants  and  needs  of  the 
duties  entrusted  to  him.  We  are  not  as  young  as 
we  once  were;  the  youth  and  vigor  and  life  and 
strength  that  was  ours  in  the  6o's  was  sadly 
strained  in  the  great  struggle,  and  has  been  still 
further  exhausted  by  the  battle  of  life  that  we 
have  been  obliged  to  fight  since  those  days.  Our 
hearts  may  be  young;  our  desires  and  intentions 
all  that  they  should  be;  but  the  strength  and 
vitality  to  carry  those  intentions  into  execution 
are  no  longer  yours  nor  mine.  And  then,  too, 
when  it  is  taken  into  consideration  that  each  year 
adds  to  the  disabilities  of  our  membership,  it  will 
be  readily  seen  that  the  duties  of  your  officers 
must,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  increase  in  the 
same  ratio.  Let  me,  therefore,  Comrades,  ask  for 
myself  and  those  who  will  come  after  me,  your 


patience.  Credit  me  with  the  sincerest  desire  to 
fill  this  position  to  the  best  interests  of  the  Post, 
and  the  satisfaction  of  every  member  in  it.  Mis 
takes,  I  shall  not  fail  to  make;  shortcomings  will 
outnumber  the  overcomings;  I  know  of  but  one 
way  we  can  be  sure  of  success:  are  you  willing  to  do 
your  part  to  secure  so  desirable  an  end?  If  you 
are,  I  congratulate  you  here  and  now  on  the  record 
that  Bryner  Post  will  make  in  1897.  If  not,  you 
can  have  no  just  cause  for  complaint,  if  we  fall 
short  of  the  privileges  and  opportunities  lying 
within  our  reach.  Let  me  ask  every  member  of 
the  Post  to  thoughtfully  consider  the  words  that 
fell  from  the  lips  of  our  Installing  Officer  tonight. 
They  are  the  words  of  wisdom,  and  are  founded 
on  truth  and  experience:  "Comrades  of  the  Post, 
I  now  present  to  you  the  officers  of  your  choice. 
I  counsel  you  to  aid  them  in  the  performance  of 
their  duties;  to  strengthen  their  hands,  and  to 
encourage  them  in  their  labors.  With  your  help, 
their  turn  of  office  may  be  highly  successful;  with 
out  it,  the  result  of  their  labors  must  be  barren." 
Now  I  take  it  that  there  is  no  member,  but  desires 
the  welfare  and  prosperity  of  this  Post,  and  if  this 
is  so,  your  officers  can  count  on  every  shoulder  be 
ing  put  to  the  wheel. 

A  good  parson  once  took  charge  of  a  large  con 
gregation  in  a  flourishing  city.  He  was  received 
royally.  Every  member  of  his  church  took  him  by 
the  hand  and  wished  him  "God  speed."  Every 
branch  of  work  in  the  church  took  a  new  lease  of 
life,  and  the  good  man  felt  that  he  had  at  last  been 
located  by  God's  Providence  in  a  place  that  made 
life  worth  living.  But  before  long,  things  began 
to  drag  a  little.  The  life  that  started  into  his 


church  with  him,  didn't  keep  up  its  vitality.  The 
parson  felt  that  the  fault  must  be  his,  and  he 
worked  all  the  harder.  He  rose  early  and  worked 
late,  but  in  spite  of  all  he  could  do,  things  did  not 
go  on  as  he  thought  they  ought  to.  Reproaching 
himself,  he  redoubled  his  efforts,  but  with  no 
measure  of  success.  Returning  to  his  home  after 
a  particularly  discouraging  and  disappointing  day, 
he  fell  asleep  and  dreamed  he  was  walking  along  a 
country  road,  and  was  surprised  to  come  across  his 
entire  congregation  surrounding  a  huge  stage  coach, 
which  was  without  horses  and  blocked  up  the  road 
way.  "We  cannot  get  this  thing  out  of  the  way," 
his  elders  told  him  as  he  came  up  to  the  throng. 
Taking  in  the  situation,  the  parson  said,  "I  will 
take  hold  of  the  tongue,  you  elders  get  hold  of  the 
front  wheels,  let  the  deacons  tackle  the  rear  wheels, 
and  the  balance  of  the  congregation  get  behind  the 
coach  and  push."  It  fairly  flew  at  first,  but  soon 
the  parson  felt  it  pull  a  little  harder,  so  he  put  in 
more  muscle  and  bent  himself  to  his  work.  But 
it  pulled  harder  and  harder,  and  when  fairly  out  of 
breath  with  his  efforts  and  nearly  exhausted,  he 
stopped  and  looked  back  to  ascertain  the  cause  of 
his  trouble.  Judge  of  his  surprise  when  he  found 
that  one  after  another  of  his  helpers  had  dropped 
their  work  and  piled  into  the  coach,  and  the  poor 
preacher  had  been  trying  to  pull  the  whole  outfit. 
Comrades,  your  officers  need  your  help  much 
more  than  you  need  theirs.  Then,  too,  this  in 
coming  administration  was  born  at  a  very  unfortu 
nate  time.  We  take  up  the  reins  laid  down  by  one 
of  the  most  faithful  and  painstaking  officers  that 
this  Post  has  ever  had.  Few  know  the  hard  work 
that  Commander  Smith  has  put  in  it  during  the 


past  year,  but  we  all  know  how  successful  it  has 
been.  It  is  one  thing  to  sit  down  and  enjoy  a 
dainty  repast,  but  who  gives  a  thought  to  the 
worry  and  care  and  skill  that  the  good  wife  and 
mother  has  expended  in  getting  up  that  repast  for 
our  enjoyment.  I  believe  I  voice  the  sentiment 
of  the  entire  Post  in  acknowledging  the  debt  of 
gratitude  we  owe  to  Commander  Phil  Smith  and 
those  he  called  around  him  as  assistants,  for  one 
of  the  most  successful  and  enjoyable  years  that 
Bryner  Post  has  ever  experienced. 

And  I  can  but  hope  that  this  new  administration 
may  find  its  way  into  the  smiles  and  favor  of  that 
noble  auxiliary  organization,  the  Ladies'  Relief 
Corps.  The  Grand  Army  has  no  friend  so  true, 
so  loyal,  so  necessary  to  its  very  existence  as  the 
Ladies'  Relief  Corps.  What  the  wife  is  to  the 
home,  in  her  never-ceasing  ministrations,  so  is  the 
Relief  Corps  to  the  Grand  Army.  And  it  is  not 
only  our  duty,  but  our  great  privilege  to  aid  and 
sustain  that  organization  by  every  means  in  our 
power. 

Now,  next  to  the  wife  comes  the  child.  The 
Grand  Army  has  a  child  that  is  proud  of  his  name, 
"Son  of  a  Veteran,"  and  we  are  unworthy  sires  if 
we  neglect  our  offspring.  May  I  ask  every  Com 
rade  to  join  me  in  an  effort  to  awaken  a  renewed 
interest  in  this  organization  of  our  boys?  They 
have  not  only  a  right  to  demand  our  fostering  care, 
but  their  success  and  welfare  should  lie  very  close 
to  the  heart  of  every  member  of  the  Post,  for  it  is 
only  through  them  that  in  a  few  years  will  the 
rising  generation  know  of  the  Grand  Army.  The 
work  that  we  are  now  trying  to  do,  we  will  soon 
have  to  lay  on  them. 


And  now  speaking  of  that  work,  and  passing 
its  fraternal  and  charitable  features,  I  want  to  say 
one  word  on  the  duty  laid  on  us  all  of  fostering  in 
the  community  where  we  live,  that  spirit  of  loyalty 
that  saved  this  land  over  thirty  years  ago.  We  can 
preach  it  in  our  lives  as  well  as  our  words,  but  our 
great  opportunity  and  where  the  most  telling  and 
lasting  work  can  be  done,  is  in  the  privilege  we 
enjoy  of  reaching  the  children  in  our  public  shools. 
Let  me  urge  oh  those  who  are  called  to  take  a  lead 
ing  part  in  this  work,  to  make  the  most  careful  pre 
paration  that  their  time  will  permit.  Do  not  make 
the  mistake  that  anything  will  do  for  the  children; 
remember,  the  impression  that  your  words  make 
upon  them,  may  be  seeds  from  which  may  spring 
the  future  safety  of  the  nation.  We  all  value 
things  by  what  they  cost.  Those  young  hearts 
little  know  what  it  cost  "to  keep  our  country  un 
divided,  and  our  flag  maintained  unsullied."  It  is 
our  place  to  tell  them,  and  indellibly  impress  upon 
them  the  priceless  value  of  the  liberty  which  will 
soon  be  in  their  keeping,  and  which  can  only  be 
kept  by  eternal  vigilance.  It  is  our  place  to  show 
them  that  "the  only  hope  of  our  Republic  rests 
in  one  country  and  one  flag."  Oh,  at  what  a  bit 
ter  cost,  Comrades,  have  we  learned  this  lesson. 

No  one  knows,  much  less  can  anyone  express 
in  words,  the  tie  that  binds  together  the  member 
ship  of  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic.  A  tie 
born  on  the  field  of  battle,  sealed  with  blood,  and 
cemented  by  hours  and  days  and  years  of  hard 
ship,  self-denial,  and  deprivation,  endured  that 
those  we  hold  dear  and  those  who  should  come 
after  us,  might  not  only  respect  themselves,  but 
demand  and  receive  the  respect  of  the  world. 


There  has  never  been  any  love  lost  by  the 
monarchies  of  Europe  for  the  Republic  carved  out 
of  English  territory  by  the  sword  of  Washington. 
They  both  hated  and  feared  us,  for  its  success 
meant  nothing  less  than  the  downfall  of  monarch- 
ial  institutions.  Let  it  be  once  demonstrated  that 
the  people  could  govern  themselves,  and  every 
civilized  people  would  insist  on,  and  sooner  or 
later  secure  their  rights.  So  when  the  cloud  of 
war  rolled  over  this  fair  land,  there  were  no  tears 
shed  in  Europe,  and  czar,  king,  and  emperor 
looked  gleefully  for  the  time  when  the  United 
States,  rent  asunder  by  civil  strife,  devastated  and 
despoiled  by  the  ravages  of  war,  would  no  longer 
threaten  the  permanency  of  monarchial  institu 
tions.  And  would-be  pall-bearers  were  not  con 
fined  to  Europe  alone;  right  here  on  American 
soil,  in  the  dark  days  of  the  6o's,  many  believed 
and  said  "the  days  of  the  Union  are  ended."  And 
many  more  were  for  peace  at  any  price.  "Com 
promise"  was  the  cry.  "Let  the  South  go!" 
And  in  the  sullen  atmosphere  that  preceded  the 
storm  Old  Glory  hung  drooping  at  the  masthead, 
and  a  cry  went  up  over  this  once  happy  land, 
"Great  God,  what  are  we  coming  to!" 

The  foundations  of  the  Government  were 
shaken,  and  with  it  tottered  every  institution — 
commercial,  industrial  and  educational — that  lived 
and  flourished  because  the  Government  lived  and 
flourished.  And  now,  with  panic  and  fear  in 
Washington,  with  consternation  and  distress  in 
New  York  and  Boston  and  Philadelphia,  there 
arose  one  hitherto  unknown  in  this  country,  with 
out  any  name  or  prestage  to  inspire  confidence, 
who  took  the  American  ensign  and  holding  it 


aloft,  said,  "I  will  make  room  for  more  stars  in 
the  azure  heaven  of  that  flag,  and  with  God's 
help,  there  never  shall  be  one  less."  Who  is 
this,  that  in  the  then  dark  hours,  when  dismay 
and  terror  hung  like  a  funeral  pall  all  over  this 
broad  land?  When  the  politician  was  wringing 
his  hands,  and  the  bondholder  crying,  "What 
shall  we  do  to  be  saved?"  When  the  wealthy 
were  shipping  their  families  to  Europe,  and  the 
streets  of  every  city  in  this  country  were  filled 
with  blanched  faces  and  quaking  knees.  Who  is 
this?  Hitherto  unknown,  unhonored,  and  un 
sung,  steps  forward  as  the  saviour  of  his  country, 
bidding  faith  to  the  faithless,  and  hope  to  the 
hopeless? 

//  is  the  Boy  in  Blue. 

How  the  Boy  in  Blue  carried  out  his  resolve, 
history  has  recorded.  He  lowered  the  first  Con 
federate  flag  at  Fort  Henry;  laid  all  night  in  the 
falling  snow,  and  fought  all  day  at  Donelson.  He 
was  shot  down  in  the  Hornet's  Nest  at  Shiloh, 
and  sank  beneath  the  blue  waters  of  Hampton 
Roads  in  the  "Congress"  and  "Cumberland." 
He  ran  the  batteries  at  Vicksburg,  and  burned  up 
with  swamp  fever  at  Chicasaw  Bayou  and  Chica- 
hominy.  He  dug  trenches,  was  blown  up  by 
mines.  He  ate  poor  food  and  drank  water  that 
he  would  have  refused  to  wash  swine  in,  at  home. 
He  languished  in  Southern  prisons.  He  bared 
his  breast  to  the  thrust  of  the  bayonet,  and  left 
arms  and  limbs  on  the  battlefield  and  in  the  hos 
pital.  There  was  no  privation  that  he  was  not 
called  upon  to  endure,  no  suffering  to  which  he 
was  a  stranger.  Through  weeks,  and  months,  and 


years,  he  kept  his  face  to  the  foe  until  there  was 
no  more  foe  to  face,  and  when  Old  Glory  floated 
the  undisputed  emblem  of  the  Nation  from  Maine 
to  California,  and  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the 
Gulf,  he  could  be  found  at  Washington  at  the 
Grand  Review,  somewhat  ragged  and  unkempt, 
to  be  sure,  but  with  a  heart  that  beat  time  to  the 
music  of  Victory,  and  with  the  same  step  that  he 
had  followed  the  foe  from  Atlanta  to  the  sea. 
The  politician  and  the  bondholder  emerged 

zp 

from  their  hiding  places,  and  never  ceased  telling 
how  they  saved  the  country,  while  the  Boy  in 
Blue,  paid  off  at  the  rate  of  $13  a  month  in 
money  that  was  worth  sixty  cents  on  the  dollar, 
went  back  to  the  farm  and  the  store  and  the  shop, 
poorer  in  purse  than  when  he  entered  the  army, 
but  with  a  consciousness  of  duty  done,  that  was 
worth  more  to  him  than  all  the  wealth  of  the 
Indias.  The  Good  Book  tells  us  that  "All  that 
a  man  hath  will  he  give  for  his  life."  Four  hun 
dred  thousand  brave,  loyal  spirits  during  that  aw 
ful  struggle  had  fled  to  the  God  that  gave  them. 
Three  hundred  thousand  more,  took  up  the  battle 
of  life  again,  shattered  in  limb  and  body,  crippled 
in  everything  but  that  God-given  courage  and 
loyalty  that  had  held  up  the  flag  of  his  country  in 
one  hand,  while  he  struck  down  treason  with  the 
other.  A  million  more,  hardened  as  they  were  to 
bloodshed  and  the  strife  of  battle,  took  up  the 
pursuits  of  every-day  life,  ploughed  neglected 
fields,  built  barns  and  houses,  bought  and  sold. 
An  era  of  unexampled  prosperity  dawned  over 
this  once  stricken  land,  and  Europe  stood  aghast 
at  the  spectacle.  History  had  never  before  chroni 
cled  such  a  country  and  such  a  people.  Never  be- 


fore  had  such  perfect  liberty  failed  to  merge  into 
the  most  unbridled  license.  Never  before  had 
such  an  army  thrown  down  their  implements  of 
warfare  and  taken  up  the  implements  of  peace. 
One  day  the  shock  of  battle;  the  next,  the  hum 
of  industry.  Emerging  from  a  baptism  of  blood, 
Lincoln  voiced  a  united  people  in  the  words, 
"With  malice  toward  none  and  charity  for  all,  let 
us  do  right  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right." 
And  around  the  world  rang  the  praises  of  the 
Great  Republic.  It  had  stood  the  test.  It  had 
come  to  stay.  And  in  the  third  of  a  century  that 
has  passed  since  those  days,  what  has  the  Boy  in 
Blue  done?  He  has  been  found  always  and  all 
the  time,  just  where  you  would  expect  to  find  one 
who  had  offered  his  life  for  his  country's  need. 
On  that  side  of  every  question  which  would  up 
hold  his  country's  honor,  serve  her  truest  and  best 
interests.  The  man  does  not  live  that  ever  bought 
or  sold  a  soldier's  vote.  No  cunning  and  speci 
ously  devised  political  trick,  meaning  wrong  but 
masquerading  under  the  name  of  right,  ever  vic 
timized  him.  He  had  had  burned  into  his  very 
soul  such  a  brand  of  loyalty,  that  he  fought  treason 
to  that  country's  best  interests  as  he  had  fought  for 
its  life  in  the  years  gone  by. 

And  he  has  lived  to  see  the  day  when,  under 
the  blessing  of  God,  no  nation  in  Europe  or 
America  but  looks  with  respect  on  the  Great 
Republic.  He  has  lived  to  see  the  day  when 
England,  our  old  time  enemy,  seeks  the  arbitra 
tion  of  commissioners  rather  than  that  of  war. 
He  has  lived  to  see  the  day  when  the  United 
States  of  America  can  say  to  the  proudest  nation 
of  Europe,  "So  far,  and  no  farther,"  and  the 


mandate  is  obeyed.  He  has  lived  to  see  the  day 
when  Uncle  Sam's  finger  is  felt  way  off  in  South 
America,  and  when  the  oldest,  haughtiest,  and 
most  bigoted  of  monarchies  dreads  that  finger 
more  than  it  does  all  the  rest  of  the  world  put 
together,  and  when  that  monarchy  is  beseeching 
the  Powers  of  Europe  to  stand  between  it  and  the 
wrath  to  come,  arising  all  over  this  great  land  at 
the  cruelty  and  oppression  going  on  at  our  very 
doors.  The  Monroe  Doctrine  was  a  theory  fifty 
years  ago, — to-day  it  is  a  great  substantial  fact. 
The  Stars  and  Stripes  carry  respect  with  them,  no 
matter  in  what  part  of  the  world  they  wave.  A 
great  many  things  have  contributed  to  this  state  of 
affairs,  but  with  due  respect,  wherever  respect  is 
due,  the  fact  that  the  United  States  was  able,  alone 
and  without  the  consent  or  help  of  any  other 
nation,  to  rise  in  its  might  and  put  down  the  most 
gigantic  rebellion  in  the  world's  history,  and  when 
that  was  done,  to  turn  its  vast  army  into  peace 
able  and  law-abiding  citizens,  was  the  one  great 
thing  that  woke  the  world  to  a  knowledge  of  its 
power,  and  earned  for  our  land  the  respect  that  it 
enjoys  to-day.  And,  Comrades,  the  Boy  in  Blue 
put  down  that  rebellion,  and  the  Boy  in  Blue  was 
the  one  that  became  the  peaceable,  law-abiding 
citizen. 

I  claim  (and  I  do  not  think  the  claim  can  be 
disputed)  that  there  is  no  distinctive  class  in  our 
Nation  that,  first  and  last,  has  begun  to  do  what 
the  Union  soldier  has  done  for  the  life,  perpetuity, 
and  prosperity  of  our  country.  No  man  has  more 
right  to  the  respect  and  love  of  the  community  in 
which  he  lives,  than  the  old  soldier.  And  if  he  has 
not  this,  it  is  because  he  does  not  respect  himself. 


It  is  because  he  does  not  claim  that  which  belongs 
to  him.  A  whole  generation,  Comrades,  has  come 
and  gone  since  the  prayers  of  a  nation  followed  you 
to  the  front.  Let  me  ask  you  to  leave  no  means 
in  your  power  unused,  to  impress  on  those  who 
are  rapidly  taking  our  places,  the  great  principles 
for  which  you  fought,  and  the  great  fight  you  put 
up  for  those  principles.  It  will  teach  them  that 
the  priceless  privileges  they  are  enjoying,  cost 
blood  and  treasure  beyond  expression,  and  it  will 
teach  them,  too,  that  their  young  lives  are  what 
they  are,  because  you  were  what  you  were,  in  the 
dark  days  of  the  6o's.  And  to  that  end,  let  me 
ask  every  soldier  of  the  Civil  War  in  this  com 
munity  to  unite  himself  with  the  Grand  Army  of 
the  Republic.  Let  those  of  us  who  know  what 
the  greatness  of  this  Republic  cost,  stand  together 
and  by  each  other,  during  the  days  of  life  yet  left 
us.  We  can  do  each  other  good,  and  we  can  do 
the  community  in  which  we  live  good,  by  and  in 
this  organization.  You  did  not  fight  alone,  but 
marched  shoulder  to  shoulder.  Come,  Comrades, 
let  us  now  walk  together  hand  in  hand.  Our 
marching  days  are  over,  the  evening  has  come, 
and  the  time  for  gathering  around  the  camp.  Will 
you  not  join  us?  We  will  gladly  share  with  you. 
A  soldier's  welcome  awaits  you.  Come  and  ex 
change  experiences  with  us,  of  your  battle  of  life, 
just  as  you  used  to  in  the  old  time  recount  around 
the  camp  fire  the  events  of  the  day  just  past. 

What  a  beautiful  and  touching  sight  that  is,  so 
often  witnessed  in  this  great  land  of  ours,  when 
once  a  year  the  family  are  gathered  together  in 
joyful  re-union.  From  far  and  near,  the  sons  and 
daughters,  the  brothers  and  sisters,  gather  under 


the  old  roof  where  were  spent  their  childhood 
years.  Touching,  I  say,  because  with  each  year  the 
locks  are  getting  scantier  and  whiter  on  mother's 
and  father's  heads.  Touching,  because  one  year 
finds  a  vacant  chair  which  has  always  been  filled 
before.  And  each  recurring  gathering  brings 
added  aching  hearts;  but,  how  even  the  sadness 
binds  in  closer  union,  the  survivors.  They  were 
all  so  necessary  to  each  other  in  the  days  gone  by; 
doubly  dear  when  their  numbers  have  become  few, 
and  their  memories,  many. 

Soldiers  of  the  Great  War,  if  you  have  not 
already  united  with  the  Grand  Army,  wait  no 
longer,  and  let  each  meeting  of  our  Post  be  like  a 
family  re-union.  Let  us  come  together  and  talk 
of  the  old  days.  And  if  the  memories  of  those 
who  have  been  called  home,  lend  a  tinge  of  sad 
ness  to  our  meetings,  those  very  memories  will 
bind  us  who  are  left,  closer  and  closer  together, 
until  we  meet  where  our  ranks  will  nevermore  be 
broken  and  our  Great  Commander  reigns  supreme. 


NUMBER  SIX 

MEMORIAL  DAY  ADDRESS  given  by 
Eliot  Callender  at  Irving  School. 

HIRTY-THREE  years  ago  this  very 
month  of  May  this  city  of  Peoria  was 
just  such  a  bower  of  beauty  as  it  is  to 
day.  Flowers  were  blooming  in  the 
gardens,  birds  were  singing.  The  trees  were 
luxuriant  with  their  wealth  of  Spring  foliage;  but 
there  was  something  the  matter, — what  was  it? 
There  was  a  kind  of  a  hush;  people  hurried  along 
the  streets  and  hardly  spoke  to  each  other.  Every 
one  had  an  anxious,  half-frightened  look.  Have 
you  ever  noticed  how  queerly  things  look  just  be 
fore  a  thunderstorm  in  Summer?  What  an  awful 
stillness  there  is!  How  the  birds  hurry  to  their 
nests  to  protect  their  young!  How  everyone 
looks  at  that  great  black  cloud  with  the  lightning 
zigzagging  through  it!  How  the  blinds  and  doors 
are  shut  and  everyone  waiting  and  fearing  the 
moment  when  the  storm  will  burst  in  all  its  fury! 
Well,  it  was  some  such  an  atmosphere  as  that, 
that  hung  over  this  city  thirty-three  years  ago. 
The  awful  cloud  of  war  had  rolled  up  over  this 
land,  and  was  about  to  burst  in  all  its  fury, 
changing  the  most  happy  and  peaceful  and  pros 
perous  land  on  the  face  of  the  globe  into  one 
great  scene  of  distress  and  anguish  and  horror. 

Hark!  what  noise  is  that?  Way  off,  up  this 
very  street  that  passes  this  schoolhouse,  could  be 
heard  the  sound  of  drums  and  fifes:  nearer  it 
conies, — louder  and  clearer  can  that  martial  music 


be  heard;  and  there  they  comey  the  boys  in  blue, 
the  first  Company  raised  in  this  city,  marching 
with  steady  tread  down  this  street  on  their  way  to 
the  War.  Some  cheered  them  as  they  went  by 
holding  the  beautiful  stars  and  stripes  aloft;  some 
waived  their  hats  and  handkerchiefs.  But  many 
a  mother  turned  from  that  sight,  her  heart  nearly 
broken  with  anguish,  not  knowing  whether  she 
ever  would  see  her  boy  again.  Many  a  wife  buried 
her  face  in  her  hands  and  wept,  desolate  and  alone 
in  her  house,  as  her  stay  and  support  and  comfort 
marched  away  behind  those  drums;  would  he  ever 
come  back?  God  alone  could  tell.  But  our  Flag 
had  been  fired  on.  All  that  made  this  land  worth 
living  in  had  been  threatened;  wicked  hands  and 
cruel  hearts  would  break  up  this,  the  best  Govern 
ment  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  fathers  and  sons 
left  the  farms,  the  stores,  and  the  offices,  deter 
mined  to  save  this  glorious  Republic  of  freedom, 
or  die. 

A  few  months,  and  another  company  of  soldiers 
marched  down  this  street  on  its  way  to  the  South, 
and  then  another,  and  another, — leaving  behind  the 
weeping  eyes  and  burdened  hearts  of  more  mothers 
and  daughters  and  sweethearts. 

Then  came  those  dreadful  battles,  with  their 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  torn  and  mangled  and 
maimed  human  beings.  The  ground  all  along  the 
border  states  was  soaked  in  blood.  Every  shell 
that  shrieked  through  the  air  and  tore  the  life- 
blood  from  some  brave  heart,  caused  another 
shriek  somewhere  in  the  North,  when  the  news 
reached  some  hitherto  peaceful  and  happy  home. 

Let  us  draw  a  veil  over  the  horrors  of  awful 
war.  It  lasted  four  years,  and  600,000  brave  men 


laid  down  their  lives  before  it  was  decided  that  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  should  continue  to  wave  over  the 
length  and  breadth  of  this  great  land,  the  undis 
puted  emblem  of  the  greatest  Republic  and  the 
best  Government  on  the  face  of  the  globe.  Six 
hundred  thousand  men!  Do  you  know  how  many 
that  is?  Standing  in  line  as  close  as  they  could 
stand  they  would  make  a  procession  170  miles 
long;  farther  than  from  here  to  Chicago.  And  as 
many  more  only  lived  to  pass  the  remainder  of 
their  days  with  broken  limbs  and  arms  and  shat 
tered  health.  What  an  awful  sacrifice! 

Most  of  these  have  gone  during  these  thirty- 
three  years  to  join  their  comrades  who  died  on  the 
field  of  battle.  And  it  is  in  memory  of  these  de 
parted  heroes  that  one  day  was  set  apart  in  each 
year,  called  "Memorial  Day,"  that  grateful  and 
loving  hearts  might  show  their  appreciation  of 
what  these  heroes  have  done. 

The  Good  Book  says,  "All  that  a  man  hath  will 
he  give  for  his  life."  These  men  gave  their  Jives 
that  you  and  I  might  live  and  enjoy  just  what  we 
are  enjoying  this  day,  and  that  is,  the  blessing  of 
a  free  and  peaceful  land.  You  little  appreciate 
now  what  that  means — free  and  peaceful — because 
you  have  never  known  anything  else,  and  I  trust 
God  in  His  mercy  will  never  let  you  know  any 
thing  else.  But  the  day  is  coming  when  all  those 
who  are  now  working  and  planning  and  striving 
to  keep  this  country  free  and  peaceful,  will  have 
passed  away,  and  this  land  will  then  be  in  the  care 
and  keeping  of  the  boys  and  girls  of  to-day. 

And  why  is  it  necessary  for  people  to  plan  and 
to  work  to  keep  this  land  free  and  peaceful?  No 
foreign  power  dares  to  insult  this  beautiful  flag. 


No,  the  danger  is  not  there;  it  lies  right  in  our 
midst.  There  are  those  living  in  this  beautiful 
land  of  ours  to-day,  that,  if  they  dared,  would 
strike  down  these  free  public  schools;  there  are 
those  who  have  came  to  this  country  because  they 
did  not  dare  to  say  their  souls  were  their  own  in 
the  land  to  which  they  belong,  who  would  gladly 
tear  down  this  Government  of  ours,  if  they  dared, 
and  have  no  government,  no  law,  no  order.  Then 
there  are  large  numbers  of  short-haired  women  and 
long-haired  men  who,  if  they  had  their  own  way, 
would  make  this  land  of  ours  a  howling  wilder 
ness  in  a  year's  time,  with  their  crazy  notions  of 
what  the  Government  ought  to  do  for  the  people. 

Now,  my  young  friends,  we  who  have  fought  to 
keep  this  land,  "The  land  of  the  free  and  the  home 
of  the  brave,"  will  soon  step  down  and  out  and 
leave  it  in  your  hands.  Will  you  fight,  if  neces 
sary,  to  keep  it  free  and  peaceful;  or  will  you  let 
a  crazy  horde  of  foreigners,  or  a  still  more  crazy 
horde  of  domestic  cranks,  take  it  away  from  you 
and  turn  what  is  now  the  most  blessed,  peaceful, 
and  happy  land  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  into  a 
home  of  anarchy  and  distress;  will  you  do  it? 

There  are  just  two  things  I  want  you  to  remem 
ber  every  time  your  eye  rests  on  the  flag  of  our 
country.  John  Paul  Jones,  who  commanded  the 
first  ship  that  ever  carried  an  American  gun,  had 
a  flag,  and  on  it  was  a  rattlesnake,  and  right  over 
the  snake  were  the  words,  "Don't  tread  on  me." 
Now  you  know  it  isn't  at  all  healthy  to  tread  on  a 
rattlesnake;  he  will  let  you  alone  if  you  don't 
bother  him,  but  he  is  as  frill  of  fight  as  an  egg  is 
full  of  meat,  and  will  settle  you  for  all  time  to 
come  if  you  go  near  him. 


And  so,  my  young  friends,  see  that  brave  and 
true  hearts  stand  behind  that  flag,  and  let  every 
foe  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes — whether  at  home  or 
abroad — know  that  of  all  the  unhealthy  jobs  he 
ever  undertakes,  insulting  that  flag  will  be  the 
worst. 

During  the  War  of  1812,  in  the  engagement 
between  the  United  States  ship  "Cheasapeake"  and 
the  British  ship  "Shannon,"  Captain  Lawrence,  as 
brave  and  true  an  American  as  ever  lived,  was 
mortally  wounded,  and  was  carried  dying  down 
into  the  cabin;  gasping  for  breath,  he  beckoned 
to  those  standing  around  him,  and  with  the  words, 
"Don't  give  up  the  ship,"  he  fell  back  dead. 

It  was  such  a  spirit  as  that,  that  wrested  this 
land  from  English  tyranny  in  the  Revolutionary 
War;  it  was  such  a  spirit  as  that,  that  humbled 
the  pride  of  that  same  nation  in  the  war  of  1812; 
it  was  such  a  spirit  as  that,  that  carried  that  flag 
through  the  dark  days  of  1861  and  1862,  and  en 
abled  us  to  thank  God  to-day  for  our  country,  for 
our  homes,  and  for  our  flag. 


NUMBER  SEVEN 

RESPONSE  TO  A  TOAST  TO  "THE 
UNITED  STATES  NAVY,"  given  by 
Eliot  Callender  before  the  Loyal  Legion 
and  invited  guests,  at  the  Auditorium  Hotel 
Banqueting  Room,  January,  i 


N  Irishman  was  once  working  with  his 
spade  in  the  basement  of  a  house,  and 
whether  Pat  dug  too  near  the  founda- 

tion,  or  what  was  the  trouble,  no  one 

knows,  but  with  a  terrific  crash  the  whole  wall  of 
the  building  commenced  to  fall  in.  Pat  only 
stayed  long  enough  to  take  in  the  situation,  when, 
dropping  his  spade,  he  ran  the  length  of  the  cel 
lar  and  with  a  mighty  leap  sprang  up  into  the  air 
and  through  the  basement  window,  and  went  roll 
ing  out  over  the  sidewalk  into  the  gutter.  The 
air  was  filled  with  crashing  timbers,  bricks,  and 
mortar.  A  crowd  quickly  gathered  supposing  the 
man  was  killed,  but  Pat  jumped  up,  "a  little  dis 
figured  but  still  in  the  ring,"  much  to  the  astonish 
ment  of  those  gathered  around.  A  good  and  pious 
friend  laid  his  hand  on  Pat's  shoulder,  saying, 
"Your  escape  is  simply  a  miracle,  you  ought  to 
thank  God  from  the  bottom  of  your  heart  for 
preserving  your  life."  "Well,"  said  Pat,  brushing 
the  dirt  and  mortar  from  his  clothes,  "It  is  very 
grateful  I  am,  to  be  sure,  but  did  you  mind  the 
agility  of  me?"  Forgive  me,  my  friends,  if  in  the 
five  minutes  alloted  to  me  in  responding  to  the 
subject  of  the  "United  States  Navy,"  I  indulge 


in  a  little  of  the  pardonable  pride  Pat  showed  on 
this  occasion. 

The  first  flag  that  ever  floated  from  the  mast 
head  of  an  American  ship,  John  Paul  Jones  ran 
up  on  the  "Bon  Homme  Richard"  in  the  Revolu 
tionary  War.  It  was  a  blue  field,  with  a  rattle 
snake  coiled  and  ready  to  strike,  and  under  it  is 
the  inscription,  "Don't  tread  on  me,"  and  that 
conies  so  near  indicating  the  spirit  of  the  United 
States  Navy  from  that  day  to  this,  that  it  shall 
serve  me  for  a  text.  It  was  that  spirit  that,  when 
England,  stung  by  the  loss  of  her  colonies  and 
despising  the  infant  Republic,  sought  in  1812  to 
trample  it  under  foot,  created  the  American  Navy. 

It  was  that  spirit  that  spread  the  sails  and  man 
ned  the  guns  of  the  ten  serviceable  vessels  owned 
by  the  United  States,  and  started  them  out  on  the 
blue  waters  of  the  Atlantic  to  take  up  the  gage  of 
battle  with  the  greatest  maritime  power  of  the 
world;  to  make  the  domineering  and  arrogant 
Royal  Cross  of  St.  George  see  stars  and  feel  stripes; 
and  to  break  into  England's  boasted  record  that, 
in  no  equal  or  nearly  equal  naval  action  had  she 
ever  lost  a  ship  or  lowered  a  flag. 

It  was  that  spirit  that  fired  Captain  Hull,  when 
on  August  19,  1812,  he  ran  the  "Constitution" 
alongside  the  "Guerriere"  and  in  one  short  hour 
stripped  that  vessel  of  every  spar,  and  dropped 
her  blood-red  ensign  into  the  sea. 

It  was  that  spirit  that  in  October  of  the  same 
year  brought  Stephen  Decatur  in  the  frigate 
"United  States"  into  Newport  Harbor,  with  the 
American  ensign  flying  from  the  "Macedonian," 
one  of  the  finest  vessels  in  the  English  Navy. 
And  who  can  blame  the  poet  of  that  time,  fairly 


bursting  with  a  combined  attack  of  patriotism  and 
the  divine  afflatus,  relieving  himself  in  these  burn 
ing  words: 

"  Then  quickly  met  our  Nation's  eyes 
The  noblest  sight  in  nater, 
A  first-class  frigate  as  a  prize 
Brought  home  by  brave  Decatur." 

And  now  in  December  of  the  same  year,  the 
gallant  Bainbridge  in  the  "Constitution"  over 
hauls  the  "Java,"  an  English  frigate  outclassing 
old  Ironsides  in  every  way,  and  in  less  than  two 
hours,  one  flag  serves  for  two  of  them,  and  that 
flag  the  Stars  and  Stripes. 

It  was  that  spirit  that  took  Perry  in  September, 
1813,  with  his  little  fleet  carrying  but  fifty-five 
guns,  out  of  Put-in-Bay  and  into  the  midst  of  the 
British  Fleet  carrying  sixty-three;  and  it  was  in  the 
satisfaction  of  that  spirit  when,  at  the  close  of  that 
bloody  conflict,  seven  English  officers  having  ten 
dered  him  their  swords,  that  he  tore  the  back  off 
of  an  old  letter  and  using  his  hat  for  a  writing-desk, 
penned  that  immortal  message  to  General  Harrison, 
"We  have  met  the  enemy,  and  they  are  ours." 

And  coming  down  to  later  days,  when  a  part  of 
the  people  of  this  land  asserted  their  right  to 
trample  the  Constitution  under  foot  and  desecrate 
our  flag,  by  plucking  stars  from  its  azure  field, — it 
was  that  spirit  that  lowered  the  first  Confederate 
flag  at  Fort  Henry  to  Foote;  that  destroyed  the 
Confederate  Fleet  at  Memphis;  that  passed  the 
lion-hearted  Farragut  through  a  seething  hell  of 
destruction  at  New  Orleans,  which  rained  alike  in 
the  air,  on  the  earth,  and  in  the  waters. 

It  was  that  spirit  which  turned  the  guns  of  the 
Confederate  ram  "Tennessee"  in  one  hour  and 


forty  minutes,  on  those  who  up  to  that  time  had 
made  them  and  served  them. 

It  was  that  spirit  that  moved  the  "Little  Moni 
tor,"  that  Sunday  morning,  from  under  the  lee  of 
the  "Minnesota"  and  ranged  her  alongside  a  foe 
four  times  her  size,  and  whose  fate  was  sealed  from 
that  hour. 

It  was  that  spirit  which  took  Charles  Waldo 
of  this  commandery  into  Galveston  Harbor  that 
dark  night,  when  he  captured  and  destroyed  the 
"Royal  Yacht,"  so  close  under  the  guns  of  the 
Confederate  Fort,  that  they  could  not  be  trained 
on  his  boats.  It  was  the  spirit  on  which  fed  the 
gallant  Rogers  and  Meade  and  Dahlgren  and 
Porter,  and  last,  but  not  least,  that  carried  the 
ever-memorable  "Kearsarge"  over  the  broad  At 
lantic  to  search,  meet,  and  destroy  a  foe  her  equal 
in  every  respect,  and  more  than  her  equal  in  many 
respects. 

And  it  was  that  spirit  that,  when  Spain  spurned 
our  offers  of  mediation  with  Cuba,  and  Spanish 
students  trampled  and  spat  upon  the  American 
Flag  in  the  streets  of  Barcelona,  that  sent  Fight 
ing  Bob  Evans  to  the  Navy  Department  with  the 
prayer  and  promise  that  if  they  would  let  him 
take  the  "Indiana"  to  Havana,  there  "would  be 
nothing  but  Spanish  spoken  in  hell  for  the  next 
three  months. 

Mr.  Commander,  every  American  revels  in  the 
glories  of  American  History;  I  am  willing  that 
history  should  speak,  as  it  does  speak,  and  always 
will  speak,  for  our  navy.  It  has  never  failed  to 
rise  to  the  full  measure  of  its  country's  necessities, 
and  mark  my  words,  the  history  yet  to  be  made  of 
the  military  achievements  of  our  Great  Republic, 


and  which  will  be  read  by  those  who  come  after 
us,  will  show  that  the  glory  shed  upon  the  Ameri 
can  Navy  by  Hull,  Decatur,  Bainbridge,  Perry, 
and  Farragut,  was  taken  up  by  those  upon  whom 
the  mantle  of  these  immortals  had  fallen,  and  was 
carried  to  still  higher  and  more  dazzling  heights. 


NUMBER  EIGHT 

WHAT  THIS  OLD  GUN  SAW.  Given 
by  Eliot  Callender,  Court  House  Square, 
Peoria,  October,  1899. 

I F  this  grim  trophy  could  speak,  what  his 
tory  more  interesting  than  the  tale  it 
could  tell?  Mounted  on  the  rocky 
heights  at  the  entrance  of  the  harbor  of 
Santiago,  peering  through  the  embrasure  in  the 
dark  and  gloomy  fortress  of  Morro  Castle  for 
many  and  many  a  year,  it  has  looked  out  over  the 
bright  green  waters  of  the  southern  sea  by  day, 
and  listened  to  the  waves  by  night  as  they  dashed 
against  the  giant  rocks  that  guard  the  dark  and 
narrow  entrance  to  the  harbor;  and  over  and  above 
it  all  these  years,  has  floated  in  sullen  defiance,  the 
red  and  yellow  banner  of  Spain — the  emblem  of 
tyranny  and  oppression,  superstition  and  bigotry, 
the  parallel  of  which  the  history  of  the  world 
shows  us  no  counterpart. 

This  gun  has  witnessed  one  of  the  most  mar 
vellous  workings  of  Divine  Providence,  ever  un 
folded  to  man:  it  has  seen  that  nation  which  alone 
of  all  the  Powers  of  Europe,  has  resisted  the  on 
ward  march  of  civilization  and  enlightenment,  who, 
at  one  time  was  the  dominant  Power  of  the  world, 
upon  whose  possessions  the  sun  never  set,  but 
whose  progress  and  whose  history  is  little  less 
than  a  horrible  record  of  cruelty  and  bloodshed; 
a  nation  without  the  word  "Liberty"  in  its  lan 
guage,  and  who  hated  and  fought  it  whenever  and 
wherever  they  found  it:  the  Inquisition  was  a  fit 


expression  of  the  undying  hatred  of  the  Spaniard 
to  everything  in  the  nature  of  individual  liberty  or 
freedom  of  conscience. 

This  gun  is  now  to  see  the  curtain  rung  down 
on  this  last  ditch  of  Mediaeval  barbarism,  whose 
banner  of  blood  and  gold  tells  of  the  one  that  has 
been  shed  for  the  other,  that  has  been  carried 
around  the  world,  leaving  a  trail  of  death  and  de 
struction,  of  misery  and  oppression;  the  flag  of 
the  infamous  Alva,  whose  victims  will  cry  to  God 
for  vengeance  as  long  as  time  lasts;  the  flag  of 
Cortes  that  waved  in  triumph  over  a  land  fairly 
soaked  with  the  blood  of  the  gentlest  and  most 
peace-loving  race  of  its  time;  the  flag  of  Pizarro, 
who  fairly  incarnadined  the  snow-clad  Peruvian 
Andes  in  his  thirst  for  gold. 

This  gun  has  heard  the  wail  that  rose  from  one 
end  of  Cuba  to  the  other,  as  she  was  ground  under 
the  iron  heel  of  the  oppressor;  heard  the  reports 
of  the  guns  that  dropped  to  the  earth  the  Ameri 
cans  that  comprised  the  "Virginius' "  crew;  has 
heard  the  clanking  chains  in  the  still  hours  of  the 
night,  that  echoed  from  the  dungeons  under  the 
Castle  walls,  and,  finally,  heard  the  call  of  God  to 
the  young  Republic  across  the  sea,  to  smite  the 
oppressor,  hip  and  thigh,  and  wipe  away  every 
vestige  of  Spanish  rule  from  the  face  of  the  West 
ern  Continent. 

And  what  a  sight  was  this!  Arrayed  against 
each  other  stood  the  last  stronghold  of  tyranny, 
darkness,  and  cruelty,  whose  history  was  written 
in  blood,  and  the  cries  of  whose  victims  encom 
passed  the  world;  and  facing  it  stood  America,  the 
youngest  of  nations,  who  had  no  history,  except 
a  struggle  for  liberty, — the  home  of  freedom,  of 


education,  of  humanity,  and  of  civilization.  It  was 
a  struggle  of  darkness  and  light  for  mastery,  and 
there  could  be  but  one  issue  for  such  a  conflict. 

And  so  this  old  gun  awoke  one  bright  morning 
and  barked  its  indignation  to  see  the  beautiful, 
bright  banner  of  liberty  proudly  floating  from  an 
American  man-of-war,  as  it  stood  watch  and  ward 
off  the  mouth  of  the  harbor  of  Santiago,  and  it 
probably  failed  to  do  justice  to  the  wrath  which 
filled  it,  as  it  saw  that  solitary  cruiser  joined  by 
another,  and  another,  until  the  whole  offing  was 
spotted  with  men-of-war,  large  and  small,  armored 
and  unarmored,  but  over  each  and  every  one 
proudly  floated  the  glorious  Stars  and  Stripes. 

Whatever  that  flag  represented,  the  Spaniard 
hated — he  had  hated  it  from  the  time  that  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  had  declared  that  all 
men  were  created  free  and  equal — he  hated  the  free 
dom,  the  enlightenment,  the  progress,  the  strength; 
and  that  the  United  States  is  not  wiped  off  the  map 
of  the  world,  and  its  flag  nothing  but  a  memory, 
is  no  fault  of  Spain,  and  no  fault  of  this  old  gun 
whose  advent  among  us  we  are  celebrating  to-day. 

And  now  this  old  gun  was  kept  busy  seeing 
things  by  night  as  well  as  by  day:  it  saw  about  an 
hour  before  dawn,  when  the  darkness  had  sur 
passed  that  of  midnight,  the  " Merrimac"  crawling 
through  the  narrow  entrance  to  the  harbor,  on 
whose  decks  Hobson  and  his  equally  brave  com 
rades  silently  guided  it  to  its  destination — feeling 
his  way  along  through  the  still,  black  waters, 
though  it  rained  a  perfect  hell  of  shot  and  shell 
on  their  devoted  heads,  from  the  hills  above  and 
the  waters  .beneath;  mines  were  exploded  before 
him  and  after  him,  and  the  air  was  full  of  flying 


missiles,  and  how  one  of  that  gallant  little  crew 
ever  lived  to  tell  the  tale,  God  alone  knows. 

It  saw  the  fated  "Merrimac"  blown  into  the  air 
by  Hobson's  own  hands;  saw  it  sink  beneath  the 
waves;  saw  its  struggling  crew  with  only  their  heads 
above  the  water,  clinging  to  the  raft,  from  which 
they  were  taken,  by  no  less  a  hand  than  Cervera's, 
and  immured  in  one  of  the  dungeons  of  old  Morro. 

It  saw  the  gallant  Cadet  Powell  with  a  little  steam 
launch  following  closely  after  the  "  Merrimac,"  with 
the  hopes  of  rescuing  and  carrying  back  to  the  fleet, 
its  crew;  saw  him,  when  hope  was  lost,  put  back 
through  the  perfect  storm  of  Mauser  bullets  that 
fairly  churned  the  water  through  which  he  rushed, 
unharmed. 

And  many  a  night  this  old  gun  trembled  as  the 
little  "Vesuvius"  poked  her  nose  close  up  to  the 
mouth  of  the  harbor  in  the  stillness  of  the  night, 
and  woke  the  lower  part  of  Santiago  Bay  with  the 
thunder  of  its  dynamite  shells.  Once,  twice,  three 
times  did  it  see  Sampson's  Fleet  steam  boldly  up 
within  a  thousand  yards  and  then  turning,  steam 
back  leaving  broken  walls,  death,  and  destruction 
in  its  wake. 

It  saw  the  "Reine  Mercedes,"  while  gallantly 
helping  the  forts  resist  Sampson's  assault,  struck 
in  the  bow  by  a  missile  from  one  of  our  thirteen- 
inch  rifles,  which  plowed  through  it  from  end  to 
end  and  sank  it  in  the  dark  waters  of  the  bay. 

It  could  hear  the  sharp  cracks  of  the  rifles  over 
on  San  Juan  hill  and  at  Siboney,  as  the  gallant 
Wood,  Wheeler,  and  Roosevelt  charged  up  those 
perilous  heights;  and  its  peace  of  mind  was  hardly 
strengthened  as  it  saw  the  Stars  and  Stripes  float 
over  that  hill  as  well  as  the  sea  in  front  of  it. 


And,  finally,  on  that  ever  memorable  third  of 
July  morning  when  Sampson's  magnificent  fleet 
was-  quietly  rocking  on  the  swell  of  the  ocean,  with 
a  little  pennant  flying  over  each  vessel,  showing 
that  the  hour  of  inspection  and  divine  service  had 
arrived,  when  every  sailor  in  that  fleet,  garbed  in 
clothes  of  spotless  white,  was  ranged  along  the 
decks  ready  to  hear  the  words  from  the  Book  that 
taught  "Peace  on  earth,  good  will  to  men",  it  saw 
the  black  smoke  rising  from  the  northern  end  of 
the  harbor;  saw  the  "Marie  Teresa,"  flying  Ad 
miral  Cervera's  flag,  coming  down  the  harbor  out 
of  the  cloud  of  smoke  which  had  enveloped  her, 
with  every  pound  of  steam  that  her  immense  boil 
ers  could  carry,  decks  all  cleared  for  action,  guns 
all  shotted  and  trained  in  readiness  for  the  inevi 
table;  saw  her  dash  through  the  tortuous  outlet  of 
the  harbor,  past  old  Morro  Castle,  followed  by  the 
huge  black  sides  and  bristling  ports  of  the  "Ad- 
miranti  Oquendo,"  the  smoke  of  her  black  funnels 
rising  just  in  time  to  admit  a  view  of  the  pride  of 
the  Spanish  Navy,  the  beautiful  "Vizcaya,"  with 
the  haughty  and  imperious  Eulate  pacing  up  and 
down  its  quarter-deck,  its  crew  of  500  men  strip 
ped  to  the  waist  and  eager  for  the  fray,  followed  in 
turn  by  that  fleet-footed  monster,  the  "Christobal 
Colon,"  fairly  dividing  the  waters  of  the  bay  as  it 
rushed  on;  and  last,  but  not  least,  the  torpedo 
boat  destroyers,  "Pluton"  and  "Furor,"  looking 
like  black  imps  of  the  devil,  and  whose  presence 
in  American  waters  had  caused  more  apprehension 
than  all  Spain's  war  vessels  put  together.  On  they 
came,  with  their  speed  at  thirty  miles  an  hour,  tor 
pedo  boats  loaded  and  ready  to  carry  to  the  bot 
tom  any  vessel  that  might  come  in  their  path. 


And  now,  if  this  old  gun  which  has  been  look 
ing  at  this  sight,  had  cast  its  eyes  toward  the  sea, 
what  a  transformation  it  would  have  witnessed! 
The  long  rows  of  seamen  ranged  along  the  decks 
of  the  United  States  vessels,  arrayed  in  their  spot 
less  garments,  are  gone — huge  volumes  of  smoke 
are  pouring  from  every  funnel  of  every  vessel  in 
the  range  of  vision;  the  magnificent  "Brooklyn," 
under  the  command  of  the  gallant  Schley,  runs  up 
the  signal,  "Make  for  the  enemy,"  "Remember 
the  'Maine."      A  mighty  cheer  arises  from  that 
fleet;  Old  Glory  that  had  been  hanging  listless  at 
the  masthead,  stands  out  proud  and  firm,  as  each 
vessel,  with  the  engineer's  bell  clanging  "Go  ahead 
at  full  steam,"  starts  through  the  waters  on  a  race 
for  victory   or  for  death;    a  terrific  roar  as  the 
tremendous  batteries  on  both  fleets  belched  forth 
defiance;  vivid  flashes  of  light  as  whole  broadsides 
spoke  at  once;  a  heavy  cloud  envelopes  the  excit 
ing  scene;  all  the  guns  on  Morro  Castle  and  the 
Socapa  open  on  our  fleet,  and  the  valleys  around 
old  Santiago  fairly  tremble  with  the  reverberation. 
On  comes  the  "Maria  Teresa,"  encountering 
first  the  "Indiana,"  then  the  "Brooklyn,"  and, 
with  her  decks  slippery  with  blood,  her  guns  dis 
mounted,  on  fire  at  both  ends,  her  helm  is  turned 
for  the  shore  as  the  peerless  "Oregon"  rushes  on  the 
scene,  followed  by  the  "Texas"  and  the  "Iowa";  a 
crash  on  the  rocks,  and  Admiral  Cervera's  flagship 
is  no  more.    The  "Admiranti  Oquendo,"  with  all 
steam  on,  tries  to  run  the  terrible  gauntlet,  but  gets 
a  mile  beyond  the  wreck  of  the  "Maria  Teresa," 
when  she  fairly  breaks  in  two  in  the  middle  under 
the  terrible  rain  of  shot  and  shell. 

Eulate,  on  the  "Vizcaya,"  seeing  the  hopeless- 


ness  of  the  -struggle,  turns  out  of  his  course  to 
attack  the  "Brooklyn."  If  destruction  must  come, 
he  will  destroy,  as  well  as  be ,  destroyed ;  but  the 
"Brooklyn's"  terrible  guns  are  ringing  her  death 
knell  as  her  helm  is  thrown  to  port  to  parallel  the 
"Vizcaya's"  new  course:  a  running  battle  of  eight 
miles,  and  with  half  his  men  killed  and  wounded, 
his  ship  on  fire,  Eulate,  with  a  broken  heart,  turns 
his  prow  to  the  shore  and  with  the  steel  projectiles 
of  the  "Brooklyn,"  "Texas,"  and  "Oregon"  tear 
ing  his  beautiful  boat  asunder,  the  "Vizcaya" 
crashes  on  the  shore.  "Don't  cheer,"  says  Captain 
Jack  Phillips  of  the  "Texas,"  "the  poor  devils  are 
dying";  and  he  turns  all  the  resources  of  his  gal 
lant  battleship  (but  a  moment  ago  a  demon  of  de 
struction)  into  an  angel  of  mercy. 

But  that  greyhound  of  the  Spanish  Fleet,  the 
"Christobal  Colon,"  keeping  close  to  the  shore  and 
running  like  a  deer,  had  passed  the  "Vizcaya"  be 
fore  Eulate  had  given  up  the  struggle,  and  was  two 
miles  to  the  west,  on  the  road  to  Havana  and  safety. 
Safety!  there  was  no  safety  in  sky,  sea,  or  air,  for 
that  Spanish  Fleet.  The  "Brooklyn,"  by  this 
time,  had  gotten  full  steam  up  and  put  out  after 
the  "Colon"  at  the  rate  of  eighteen  knots  an  hour; 
she  could  just  reach  the  "Colon"  with  her  long 
guns,  but  if  the  "Colon"  could  outfoot  her,  an 
hour  would  put  her  in  safety.  But  what  is  that 
huge  black  mass  that  comes  rushing  through  the 
water  with  the  roaring  foam  piled  to  the  golden 
crest  of  her  breakwater?  It  is  the  immortal 
"Oregon"  under  the  gallant  Clark;  passing  the 
"Brooklyn"  (thought  to  be  the  fleetest  boat  in 
our  navy),  with  her  engineers  and  firemen  stripped 
to  the  waist,  her  furnaces  at  white  heat,  and  with 


Eberle  at  his  thirteen-inch  rifle,  dropping  a  thous 
and-pound  steel  projectile  on  and  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  the  on-rushing  "Colon"  every  seven 
minutes,  the  "Oregon"  made  the  run  of  her  life 
and  won  a  place  that  will  never  be  lost  as  long  as 
an  American  heart  shall  beat.  For  forty-eight 
miles  the  "Colon"  kept  up  the  struggle,  when, 
seeing  its  hopelessness,  with  the  "Brooklyn"  and 
the  "Oregon"  already  off  her  port  bow,  her  com 
mander  turned  her  head  to  the  shore,  and  dropping 
her  ensign  of  blood  and  gold  in  token  of  defeat, 
he  opened  her  sea  valves  and  Cervera's  Fleet  was 
no  more. 

And  now,  on  the  morning  of  July  i4th,  our  gun 
is  a  witness  to  the  last  act  in  the  drama:  Santiago 
surrenders,  and  from  that  tall  flagstaff  on  Morro 
Castle  is  slowly  and  sadly  lowered  the  Spanish 
standard,  which  has  flouted  defiance  to  the  world 
from  time  almost  beyond  the  memory  of  man,  and 
it  hardly  disappears  until  there  bursts  into  view, 
climbing  into  the  air,  the  flag  of  the  Great  Re 
public — the  glorious  Stars  and  Stripes.  A  new 
day  had  dawned  upon  Cuba  and,  let  me  add,  the 
world. 


NUMBER  NINE 

» 

ADDRESS  AT  THE  GRAVE  OF 
COLONEL  THRUSH,  Memorial  Day; 
for  Sons  of  Veterans,  by  Eliot  Callender. 

'TILL  waters  run  deep."  It  is  not  in  the 
noisy  brook,  but  in  the  silent  river  that 
we  look  for  strength  and  depth.  The 
froth  and  fury  of  the  breakers  on  the 
ocean  shore  but  mark  the  sandy  shoal.  It  is  away 
out  where  the  deep  sea  rolls  in  silent  grandeur,  that 
the  navies  of  the  world  ride  in  safety.  As  in 
nature,  so  with  humanity.  The  world's  greatest 
heroes  have  come  from  the  ranks  of  its  quiet  men. 
It  was  not  the  general  who  filled  the  newspapers 
with  his  general  orders  from  headquarters  in  the 
saddle,  but  the  one  who  in  thirteen  words  designa 
ted  his  line  of  action  that  compelled  the  surrender 
of  Lee's  army.  It  has  been  actions,  not  words. 
It  has  been  thought  and  not  sounds  that  has 
wrought  out  the  problems  that  have  come  up  for 
solution  in  the  world's  history. 

We  stand  to-day  around  the  grave  of  one  who 
in  life  was  one  of  the  world's  quiet  men,  gentle, 
modest,  unassuming,  but  with  a  quiet  dignity  that, 
like  the  silent  river,  betokened  depth.  There  was 
that  about  him  that  told  of  a  reserved  force,  irre 
sistible  if  once  aroused.  A  warm  friend,  a  loving 
father,  a  faithful  and  devoted  husband  with  all 
about  him  to  create  an  ideal  and  happy  life.  Loved 
and  being  loved,  he  cut  every  tie  at  his  country's 
call  and  sought  his  place  at  the  forefront  of  battle. 
Of  such  stuff  are  heroes  made.  I  know  of  no 


one  who  comes  nearer  my  ideal  of  a  hero  than 
Colonel  Wm.  A.  Thrush. 

In  the  month  of  April,  1862,  the  Mississippi 
Squadron,  under  command  of  Rear  Admiral  A. 
H.  Foote,  ran  the  blockade  at  Island  No.  10, 
destroyed  the  batteries  below  the  island,  put  to 
flight  the  Confederate  gunboats,  ferried  General 
Pope's  army  across  the  river,  and  on  the  yth  day 
of  April,  the  island,  with  its  extensive  fortifications, 
including  sixty-four  pieces  of  siege  artillery  sur 
rendered  to  Admiral  Foote;  while,  the  next  day, 
General  Pope  took  in  the  Confederate  army  num 
bering  over  5,000,  together  with  a  large  store  of 
munitions  of  war.  This  was  the  same  day  as  the 
battle  of  Shiloh.  On  the  evening  of  April  8th, 
after  the  turmoil  and  confusion  of  three  days  of 
fighting,  the  gunboat  "Cincinnati,"  on  which  I 
was  serving,  tied  up  to  the  bank  of  the  river  at 
New  Madrid  Mission,  where  General  Pope's  army 
was  encamped.  A  number  of  army  officers  came 
aboard  the  boat,  amongst  them,  Colonel  Thrush. 
Coming  up  to  me,  with  his  quiet  smile  and  taking 
my  hand,  he  said:  "I  have  just  returned  from  home. 
I  bring  you  a  message  from  one  who  looked  as  if 
she  would  have  given  worlds  to  have  brought  it 
to  you  herself."  I  can  see  that  kindly  eye  and  feel 
the  pressure  of  that  hand  even  now.  Just  six 
months  to  a  day  from  that  eventful  evening,  that 
hand  was  cold  in  death,  and  those  eyes  that  ex 
pressed  so  much  to  me,  were  closed  forever.  His 
life's  blood  was  ebbing  away  on  the  bloody  field  of 
Corinth.  A  sacrificial  offering  on  his  country's 
altar,  offered  up  that  this  land  might  be  a  Nation 
and  not  a  Confederation;  that  not  a  star  might  be 
effaced  from  that  glorious  banner,  and  that  this  land 


might,  indeed,  be  the  land  of  the  free  as  well  as  the 
home  of  the  brave. 

"  How  sleep  the  brave"  who  sink  to  rest 
With  all  their  country's  wishes  blest, 
When  spring  with  dewy  fingers  cold 
Returns  to  deck  their  hallowed  mould, 
If  there  shall  dress  a  sweeter  sod 
Than  blooming  fancy  ever  trod." 

Peacefully,  amid  these  beautiful  surroundings, 
in  the  home  he  loved  so  well,  he  sleeps;  but  sleep 
ing,  he  speaks,  and  the  word  to  you,  Sons  of  Vet 
erans,  who  have  honored  yourselves  in  honoring 
him,  is  this,  "Suffer  not  this  precious  blood  which 
has  been  shed,  to  have  been  shed  in  vain;  suffer 
not  a  traitorous  tongue  to  wag  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  this  fair  land."  A  priceless 
heritage  is  intrusted  to  your  care  and  keeping;  a 
heritage  of  freedom,  a  heritage  of  the  grandest  sys 
tem  of  government  the  sun  ever  shone  on.  Can 
you  look  upon  the  folds  of  that  starry  flag  and  not 
have  your  hearts  stirred  within  you,  the  thought  of 
all  the  blood  and  tears  and  agony  that  it  has  cost, 
that  it  might  float  as  it  does  to-day  over  a  nation 
of  freemen?  That  flag  first  saw  the  light  of  day 
in  heroic  hands,  for  heroes  like  Colonel  Thrush 
have  lived  and  died,  and  into  the  hands  of  the 
young  men  of  America,  it  now  passes.  I  know  it 
will  never  lack  in  their  hands,  the  love,  devotion, 
and  courage  that  has  held  it  aloft  since  the  days  of 
Washington. 

«'  Flag  of  the  Heroes  who  left  us  their  glory 
Borne  through  our  battlefields'  thunder  and  flame, 
Blazoned  in  song  and  illuminant  in  story, 
Wave  o'er  us  all  who  inherit  their  fame. 

Lord  of  the  Universe  shield  us  and  guide  us 
Trusting  Thee  always  through  shadow  and  sun, 
Thou  hast  united  us — who  shall  divide  us  ? 
Keep  us,  O  keep  us,  the  many  in  one." 


NUMBER  TEN 

ADDRESS  ON  BEHALF  OF  THE  Y. 
M.  C.  A.,  given  by  Eliot  Callender,  before 
the  Congregation  of  Christ  Church,  Peoria, 


VER  twenty  years  ago,  some  eight  or  ten 
gentlemen  were  gathered  one  evening  at 
the  residence  of  one  of  Peoria's  leading 
merchants.  It  was  not  an  extraordinary 
meeting,  in  any  sense  of  the  word, — many  meet 
ings,  before  and  since,  have  taken  place  in  Peoria, 
more  noticeable  in  many  ways,  but  none,  perhaps, 
that  have  resulted  in  more  good  from  both  a  civic 
and  religious  point  of  view,  than  this  meeting. 
For  then  and  there  it  was  decided  to  organize  a 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  in  the  city  of 
Peoria.  I  will  not  weary  you  with  an  account  of 
the  early  years  of  this  Association,  for  every  move 
ment  of  a  religious  or  reformatory  nature  in  this 
city  has  passed  through  a  like  experience.  Days 
when  weak-kneed  friends  advocated  a  funeral. 
Days  when  no  one  knew  how  long  the  patient 
could  survive  the  ordeal  it  was  passing  through. 
This  church,  and,  so  far  as  I  know,  every  church 
in  this  city  has  passed  through  just  such  times,  but 
if  God  be  for  us,  who  can  be  against  us,  and  who 
can  doubt  His  sustaining  power  and  help  to  any 
organization  which  has  for  its  avowed  purpose, 
God's  glory,  and  the  good  of  mankind? 

And  now,  friends  of  Christ  Church  of  Peoria, 
on  this,  the  twenty-first  anniversary  of  the  organi 
zation  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 


of  Peoria,  I  have  been  delegated  to  set  before  you: 

1.  What  this  Association  is. 

2.  What  it  is  doing. 

3.  What  we  expect  to  do. 

4.  What  we  will  ask  you  to  do  for  us. 
Now,  please  don't  anticipate  a  collection,  and  look 
at  me  as  if  you  had  plenty  on  your  own  account. 
We  need  money  just  as  badly  as  any  one,  but  I 
am  not  here  to-day  to  ask  you  for  one  cent.    The 
only  collection  I  will  ask,  will  be  for  you  to  collect 
your  thoughts  for  just  a  few  moments  on  the  facts 
and  figures  I  am  to  give  you,  and  then  I  will  ask 
you,  if  the  Associatian  commends  itself  to  your 
judgment  as  a  Christian  and  a  citizen  of  Peoria, 
that  you  will  give  us  your  good  will,  your  prayers, 
and  your  cordial  co-operation  and  help,  whenever 
and  wherever  you  can  find  opportunity  to  do  so. 

FIRST:  What  is  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association?  It  is  not  an  association  of  Christian 
young  men,  but  an  association  that  aims  to  help 
young  men,  morally,  physically,  and"  religiously. 
It  comes  into  direct  competition  with  the  saloon, 
the  gambling  hell,  and  the  brothel,  as  to  where  the 
spare  hours  of  the  growing  boys  of  Peoria  shall  be 
spent.  It  provides  pleasant  rooms,  pleasant  com 
pany,  good  reading,  opportunities  for  study,  and 
innocent  and  healthful  amusements.  It  comes  at 
a  time  when  so  many  young  men  feel  they  have 
outgrown  the  Sunday  School  of  their  boyhood 
days, — at  a  time  when  fond  parents  fear  their  con 
trol  of  this  boy  is  slipping  away  from  them.  It 
comes  to  such  and  says:  "Here  are  hundreds  of 
your  young  friends  and  associates,  here  are  pleas 
ant  and  profitable  surroundings,  here  is  exercise  for 
your  growing  muscles,  and  food  for  your  growing 


minds.  Here  are  amusements  free  from  vile  asso 
ciations,  and  pleasures  unmarred  by  the  trail  of  the 
serpent.  All  that  you  will  get  here  will  make  your 
home  the  dearer,  and  your  church  the  more  sacred, 
for  He  who  made  the  one  and  founded  the  other, 
is  the  Way,  and  the  Truth,  and  the  Life,  of  every 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association."  To  the 
youth  so  unfortunate  as  to  be  devoid  of  home  or 
church,  or  both,  it  says,  as  Moses  said  unto  Hobab, 
"Come  and  go  thou  with  us,  and  we  will  do  thee 
good."  While  God  has  given  us  nothing  that  can 
fully  take  the  place  of  either  home  or  church,  the 
properly  equipped  Association  will  go  a  long  ways 
toward  supplying  the  wary:,  and  what  is  best  of  all, 
tends  to  inculcate  a  desire  and  love  for  both. 

There  is  no  more  restless  time  in  a  man's  life, 
than  when  changing  from  boyhood  to  manhood. 
He  feels  the  warm,  rich,  healthy  blood  surging 
through  his  veins.  He  feels  the  coming  of  a 
man's  strength,  which  often  gets  in  ahead  of  man's 
wisdom  and  discretion,  and  that  is  a  dangerous 
time.  That  budding  man  is  going  to  find  a  vent 
for  his  energies,  and  if  he  does  not  find  it  in  good 
ways,  he  is  going  to  find  it  in  bad.  He  is  going 
to  seek  company  of  some  kind,  and  go  with  the 
crowd.  The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
steps  right  in  here  and  does  some  of  its  best  work. 
It  aims  to  surround  the  young  man  with  bright, 
wide  awake  company,  and  plenty  of  it.  It  has 
got  him  to  blowing  cornets  and  pounding  drums. 
It  has  got  him  kicking  footballs  and  riding  wheels. 
It  has  got  him  training  his  voice  and  expanding  his 
chest.  It  has  got  him  studying  bookkeeping  and 
German,  and  brightening  his  wits  in  Debating 
Societies,  and  there  are  more  than  a  thousand  of 


them  doing  these  very  things  in  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  of  Peoria.  You  cannot  take 
a  hearty,  healthy,  vigorous  boy  and  give  him  a  copy 
of  "Baxter's  Saints'  Rest,"  and  tell  him  to  be  good. 
It  will  be  anything  but  a  saint's  rest  in  his  vicinity. 
Take  up  that  hearty,  vigorous  vitality,  give  it  some 
thing  healthful  to  expand  and  grow  on.  Turn 
those  energies  in  right  channels,  and  you  will  soon 
develop  a  good,  strong,  healthy  man,  with  good, 
honest  true  impulses.  You  will  get  a  good  citizen, 
a  good  father,  and  a  good  Christian. 

This  is  the  work  we  are  doing,  my  friends,  and 
I  ask  you  in  all  sincerity,  if  we  do  not  demonstrate 
not  only  our  right  to  live,  but  our  right  to  your 
hearty  co-operation  and  help — to  your  God-speed. 
The  church  cannot  do  this  work,  it  cannot  provide 
the  accessories.  Neither  can  we  do  the  work  of  the 
church.  Have  you  ever  gone  into  the  printing 
rooms  of  one  of  our  daily  papers,  and  seen  that 
machine  that  takes  up,  sheet  by  sheet,  from  the  pile 
of  paper,  and  feeds  it  into  the  great  press?  Well, 
the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  is  the 
feeding  machine,  and  the  press  is  the  church.  All 
through  the  year  our  young  men  are  coming  to  the 
church,  and  saying,  "I  am  now  ready  to  enter  into 
covenant  relations  with  the  people  of  God." 

But  I  find  in  telling  you  what  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  is,  I  have  run  into  my  second 
part,  and  am  telling  you  what  it  doing;  so  I  will 
pass  that  in  a  few  statistics  for  1898. 

I  have  lived  to  see  the  membership  grow  from 
eighteen  to  this  number — one  thousand — and  I 
expect  to  live  to  see  it  nearly  double  that  number, 
and  that  brings  me  around  to  our  third  heading  of 
"What  we  expect  to  do." 


Well,  with  God's  help,  we  expect  to  keep  pace 
with  the  growth  of  the  city  of  Peoria,  and  that 
means  a  good  deal.  Have  you  any  idea  how  this 
city  has  shaken  itself  out  of  its  swaddling  clothes 
during  the  past  five  years,  and  what  marvellous 
strides  it  is  taking  toward  a  metropolitan  city? 
Have  you  noted  the  manufactories  built,  building, 
and  in  contemplation?  Do  you  know  that  the 
business  of  this  city  has  nearly  doubled  in  that 
time,  and  that  literally  thousands  are  coming  to 
this  city  every  year,  and  making  their  homes  here? 
Think  of  this  city  five  years  ago,  and  then  jump 
on  the  street  cars  and  just  note  what  you  can  see 
for  a  nickle — north,  south,  and  west,  farther  and 
farther  out  advances  the  army  of  dwellings.  Where 
corn  was  raised  five  years  ago,  ground  is  now  worth 
$20  a  front  foot,  and  there  is  no  day  in  the  year, 
excepting  Sundays,  when  you  may  not  hear  a  whole 
orchestra  of  saws,  hammers,  chisels,  and  planes,  in 
any  part  of  the  city  you  choose  to  go.  If  you  do 
not  know  this,  there  are  those  all  over  the  United 
States  that  do>  and  you  are  going  to  meet  them  face 
to  face  before  long.  Railroads  that  turned  the  cold 
shoulder  to  Peoria  a  few  years  ago,  are  lying  awake 
nights  now  to  figure  out  how  they  can  best  get  in, 
and  this  all  means,  my  friends,  that  every  Christian, 
or  reformatory,  or  benevolent  organization  in  the 
city  that  expects  to  keep  pace  with  its  growth,  has 
got  all  the  work  on  its  hands  that  it  can  attend  to. 
And  when  you  consider  that  the  pioneers  in  any 
city's  growth,  are  men — and  mostly  young  men — 
you  can  begin  to  realize  what  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  has  got  to  do,  if  it  does  its 
duty.  Hardly  a  day  passes  by,  when  a  stranger 
does  not  drop  into  our  rooms.  Every  effort  is 


made  to  make  him  feel  at  home, — to  make  him 
acquainted.  Cheerful  rooms,  good  papers  and 
books,  are  at  his  disposal;  if  needed,  a  boarding 
house  is  looked  up  for  him,  and  now  let  me  ask 
you,  where  else  in  the  city  could  he  go  as  a 
stranger  and  be  made  welcome,  unless  it  was  some 
place  where  he  would  have  to  buy  his  welcome,  and 
the  welcome  runs  out  at  the  same  time  his  money 
does? 

Now,  what  do  we  ask  you  to  do  for  us? 

Remember  us  and  our  work  in  every  way  in 
your  power.  Encourage  your  boys  to  unite  with 
us,  and  have  them  do  so  with  the  thought  that  they 
are  not  only  helping  themselves,  but  others,  by  so 
doing, — that  they  are  taking  up  real,  practical, 
Christian  work  in  the  Association,  and  work  that 
God  is  blessing  by  results  that  can  be  seen  and 
felt.  We  ask  you  to  look  on  us  as  your  helpers, 
and  not  in  any  sense  of  the  word,  rivals.  We  ask 
you  to  join  hands  with  us  in  the  good  work  we  are 
trying  to  do  in  a  special  field;  to  save  our  young 
men,  to  guide  their  feet  in  safe  roads,  to  lead  them 
into  the  course  that  will  make  them  good  citizens, 
good  heads  of  families,  and  above  all,  good  Christ 
ians.  And  in  doing  this,  you  will  aid  in  a  work 
that  was  dear  to  the  hearts  of  two  honored  and 
revered  members  of  this  church — A.  G.  Tyng  and 
Charles  F.  Bacon.  And  amongst  the  many  friends 
the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  of  Peoria 
claim  in  your  living  membership,  you  have  given 
us  our  vice-president,  one  of  two  who  have  fairly 
carried  the  financial  burden  of  the  Association  in 
the  most  trying  times  of  its  history. 


NUMBER  ELEVEN 

RESPONSE  TO  TOAST:  "WOMAN 
AND  HER  RELATION  TO  BANK 
ING,"  given  by  Eliot  Callender  at  Banquet, 
National  Hotel,  Peoria;  on  the  occasion  of 
Illinois  State  Bankers'  Convention. 

•HEN  half  of  this  country  was  at  war 
with  the  other  half,  and  our  half  was 
down  in  their  half,  we  were  obliged  to 
keep  our  eyes  open  whenever  we  wan 
dered  away  from  camp,  that  we  might  be  able  to 
get  back  when  we  wanted  to.  I  approach  this 
toast  with  very  much  such  a  feeling,  and  only  trust 
that  if  I  can  pick  up  courage  to  go  into  it  a  little 
way,  I  may  be  able  to  get  back  in  good  order. 
Any  subject  connected  with  woman  or  her  inter 
ests,  has  to  be  delicately  and  carefully  handled  in 
this  city  of  Peoria,  for  the  sex  has  a  club  here, 
some  four  hundred  strong,  with  many  of  the 
brightest  and  keenest  intellects  of  the  city  for 
members,  with  a  handsome  and  commodious  club 
house,  equipped  with  anything  and  everything 
necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  women's  rights, 
and  woe  to  the  unlucky  wight  who  throws  down 
his  gauntlet  at  the  portal  of  that  institution.  Only 
one  man  living  ever  attempted  it,  and  he  is  not 
here  now,  and  he  didn't  dare  to  live  alone  any 
longer,  even  where  he  went. 

So  I  want  to  say  right  here  and  now,  if  any 
thing  in  my  response  to  this  toast  meets  with  the 
disapproval  of  any  lady  in  Peoria,  I  want  it  under 
stood,  in  the  first  place,  that  I  never  said  it,  and 


in  the  second  place,  that  I  didn't  mean  at  all  what 
she  supposed  I  did.  I  have  long  watched  with 
anxious  solicitude  the  waning  vegetation  on  the 
top  of  my  head,  and  I  am  not  willing  to  have  it 
suddenly  and  violently  converted  into  a  desert 
place. 

WOMAN  AND  HER   RELATION  TO   BANKING. 

I  infer  that  this  toast  brings  up  to  mind  the 
story  of  the  husband  who  surprised  his  wife  on 
her  birthday,  with  a  bank  book,  showing  a  sub 
stantial  little  deposit,  and  a  check  book,  the  only 
condition  being  that  this  was  her  money,  she  was 
to  spend  it  just  as  she  pleased  (husbands  are  always 
doing  such  things  as  these).  She  gave  him  a  hearty 
kiss  and  opened  up  next  morning  on  her  financial 
career,  by  buying  a  paper  of  pins  and  proudly  giv 
ing  the  storekeeper  a  check  on  her  bank  account 
for  the  amount. 

She  walked  the  streets,  conscious  that  as  long  as 
that  check  book  lasted  she  was  monarch  of  all  she 
surveyed.  And  she  was  going  to  show  John,  too, 
what  a  sensible  little  head  rested  on  her  shoulders. 
She  would  not  make  the  mistake  that  Rockefeller 
did,  and  buy  a  university  that  turned  out  boys  and 
girls  with  those  hideous  mortar  board  hats, — at 
least  not  while  Graves  had  such  lovely  ones,  and 
so  reasonable  too. 

So  she  went  on  her  way,  dispensing  her  checks 
in  her  own  sweet  and  incomparable  manner,  until 
one  morning  the  mail  carrier  brought  her  a  com 
munication  from  the  cashier,  that  her  account  was 
overdrawn,  and  trusting  that  there  was  no  mistake, 
etc.,  he  was  most  truly  hers. 

The  horrid  wretch,  how  dared  he  invade  the 
sancity  of  that  home,  and  mix  himself  up  in  her 


family  affairs.  She  wouldn't  tell  John  because  he 
would  thrash  that  fellow  within  an  inch  of  his  life. 
She  would  settle  him  herself, — and  she  did.  When 
he  looked  up  the  next  morning  through  the  pol 
ished  brass  railing,  built  expressly  to  keep  the  poor 
banker  from  the  vengeance  of  an  outraged  public, 
he  saw  a  slight  figure,  but  Oh  my!  the  roses  on  top 
of  her  hat  were  playing  leap  frog,  and  the  icy  glint 
of  those  blue  eyes  would  have  forced  frost  into  the 
North  Pole.  If  it  had  been  a  man,  he  would  have 
grabbed  for  his  revolver,  but  as  it  was,  his  knees 
rattled,  and  he  suffered  and  was  still. 

"What  does  this  mean?"  she  said  in  a  tone  that 
stopped  the  clock  and  dropped  the  thermometer 
off  the  wall.  "Why,  madame,  that  is — you 
know — our  books  show  that  your  account  has 
been  overdrawn, — as  it  were, — maybe  it  is  a  mis 
take,  madame.  Leave  your  book  here  and  we 
will  have  it  written  up."  "I  will  do  nothing  of 
the  kind,"  she  replied,  "I  am  entirely  capable  of 
doing  all  the  writing  in  that  book  that  is  neces 
sary,"  and  majestically  taking  her  check  book  out 
of  its  newspaper  wrapping  fastened  with  two  pins, 
she  said,  "See  here,  young  man  (cashiers  are  always 
young,  their  life  is  such  a  happy  one),  my  husband 
gave  me  that  book  for  my  very  own.  It  is  not  half 
used  up  yet,  and  I  will  just  thank  you  to  mind  your 
own  business."  There  was  a  vanishing  rustle  of 
skirts,  and  the  silence  she  left  in  that  banking  room 
was  something  apalling. 

But  I  have  never  seen  the  papers  for  this  story, 
and  it  may  be  a  miserable  slander.  For  I  start  out 
with  the  assertion  that  while  some  bankers  become 
financiers  by  force  of  circumstances,  women  were 
born  so. 


When  money  gathers  at  all  the  centers  and  the 
market  is  glutted,  who  so  sweetly  and  persistently 
starts  it  into  needed  circulation?  Financiers  may 
study  and  write  and  plan  and  think  over  the  situa 
tion,  but  woman,  with  her  unerring  instinct,  cuts 
the  Gordian  knot.  "If  money  is  so  plenty,  what 
better  time,  John,  to  get  my  seal  skin  sacque  and 
winter  hat,  and  put  a  new  carpet  in  the  parlor,  and 
give  that  little  company  we  have  been  talking  about 
so  long."  John  weakens,  and  the  hearts  of  the 
furrier,  the  milliner,  the  carpet  man,  and  the  caterer, 
are  rejoiced,  and  so  are  their  creditors  and  their 
creditors'  creditors,  and  times  get  better,  and  busi 
ness  picks  up.  What  wont  pick  up  when  a 
woman  gets  after  it. 

The  best  banker  is  probably  he  who  is  the  best 
judge  of  credits.  Then  women  should  be  bankers, 
and  the  men  stay  at  home  and  mind  the  children. 
A  woman  will  go  into  church,  and  with  one  sweep 
of  her  eye,  will  correctly  diagnosis  the  financial 
condition  of  every  family  in  it.  She  will  recognize 
Mrs.  Brown's  last  year's  hat,  in  spite  of  the  new 
trimming  on  it.  Why  didn't  Mrs.  Brown  have  a 
new  hat?  Poor  Mrs.  B. — sorry  her  husband  isn't 
doing  better.  And  she  wont  get  fooled,  either. 
There  are  the  Smiths,  all  with  new  hats;  but  that 
don't  work,  for  Mrs.  Smith  has  let  one  of  her 
girls  go,  and  they  only  take  one  quart  of  milk  a 
day.  The  Smiths  are  sledding  along  on  hard 
ground,  and  she  knows  it,  and  their  new  hats 
don't  throw  any  dust  in  her  eyes. 

I  often  think,  if  we  bankers  had  less  sense,  and 
more  of  woman's  unerring  instinct,  we  would  not 
have  so  much  to  charge  up  to  profit  and  loss. 

The  items  of  interest  and  discount  are  very  im- 


portant  factors  in  a  banker's  business.  How  about 
women  in  relation  to  them? 

Well,  there  is  nothing  in  this  mundane  sphere 
in  which  there  is  so  much  interest  taken,  as  in 
woman.  As  for  discount,  she  discounts  the  whole 
world,  and  you  know  it.  As  to  bills  receivable 
and  bills  payable,  who  so  competent  to  deplete  the 
one  and  build  up  the  other.  The  banker  lies  awake 
nights  planning  to  keep  up  his  reserves,  while  there 
is  no  woman  living  who  hasn't  reserve  to  burn. 

So  we  see  that  in  every  detail  of  banking,  woman 
not  only  holds  her  own,  but  is  really,  as  in  other 
relations  of  life,  the  Better  Half.  She  is  the  power 
behind  the  throne.  She  is  now,  and  always  has  been, 
the  active  moving  spirit  of  the  world.  Adam  would 
have  been  lying  around  the  Garden  of  Eden  yet, 
naming  animals  for  a  living,  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
woman.  When  Eve  appeared,  business  started 
up.  She  opened  up  negotiations  with  the  Serpent, 
and  while  the  pomological  deal  that  resulted,  has 
been  looked  upon  as  a  bad  investment  for  their 
children;  it  was  quite  the  reverse,  for  work  is  not 
a  curse,  but  the  lack  of  it  certainly  is.  Adam  and 
Eve  went  on  the  road,  and  the  commercial  traveller 
is  with  us  yet  to-day. 

Some  old  dyspeptic  pagan  slanders  Pandora, 
when  he  tells  us  that  she  let  all  man's  blessings  but 
one  escape  out  of  her  box.  I  would  like  to  know 
what  the  blessings  were  good  for,  shut  up  in  the 
box.  Pandora  did  just  what  her  sex  has  done  for 
man  ever  since:  scattered  blessings  along  his  path 
of  life,  so  that  he  has  been  enabled  to  sing  while 
he  worked,  and  feel  that  life  was  worth  living,  be 
cause  she  lived  and  loved  and  toiled  and  planned 
for  him. 


"To  chase  the  clouds  of  life's  tempestuous  hours, 
To  strew  its  short  but  weary  way  with  flowers, 
New  hopes  to  raise,  new  feelings  to  impart, 
And  pour  celestial  balsam  on  the  heart. 
For  this  to  man  was  lovely  woman  given, 
The  last,  best  work,  the  noblest  gift  of  Heaven." 

And  I  can  see  in  my  mind's  eye,  walking  down 
to  his  business  of  a  morning,  a  banker  with  digni 
fied  mien,  white  necktie  and  gold  eye-glass.  He 
is  a  big  man  in  the  community  in  which  he  lives, 
he  knows, — in  fact  he  has  often  told  himself  so, 
confidentially.  He  can  paralyze  the  industries  of 
his  town  by  drawing  up  his  purse  strings;  yet  he 
has  just  left  one  who  could  paralyze  him  and  would 
too,  if  he  didn't  behave  himself.  If  he  is  (and  we 
will  admit  he  is)  honorably  filling  an  honorable 
position,  ten  to  one  he  has  left  one  at  home  who 
has  made  him  what  he  is. 

"  Disguise  our  bondage  as  we  will, 
'Tis  woman,  woman  rules  us  sail." 

And  it  is  a  blessed  good  thing  that  this  is  so. 
Blessed,  if  honor  and  honesty  and  justice  and 
mercy  have  anything  to  do  with  dealings  between 
man  and  man. 

'«  God  in  his  harmony  has  equal  ends 
For  cedar  that  resists  and  reed  that  bends. 
For  good  it  is  that  woman  sometimes  rules, 
Holds  in  her  hands  the  power,  and  manners,  schools, 
And  laws,  and  mind,  succeeding  master  proud, 
With  gentle  will  and  smiles  she  leads  the  crowd." 


NUMBER  TWELVE 

THE  HORSE  HE  RODE.  Written  by 
Eliot  Callender  for  Frank  Leslie's  Weekly, 
1899. 

O  one  of  a  reflective  turn  of  mind,  the 
study  of  fellow-passengers  is  an  unfail 
ing  source  of  enjoyment;  the  more  so, 
_  on  the  Trans-Continental  lines  of  rail 

road,  where  stations  are  far  apart  and  the  scenery 
somewhat  tiresome  at  times,  through  sameness. 

On  a  bright  day  some  time  ago,  it  was  my  for 
tune  to  constitute  one  of  a  well-filled  carload  of 
passengers  who  had  been  domiciled  in  the  Pullman 
car  "Moza,"  enroute  from  Kansas  City  to  El  Paso, 
Texas.  My  interest  in  my  fellow-travellers  con 
centrated  on  two,  representing  as  they  did,  widely 
divergent  phases  of  life.  As  far  as  the  East  is 
from  the  West,  so  far,  indeed,  were  these  lives  re 
moved  from  each  other — past,  present,  and  future. 
They  occupied  only  in  common,  the  plain  of  youth. 
God's  mysterious  Providence  had  set  a  great  and 
impassible  gulf  between  them  otherwise. 

Lieutenant  H of  the U.  S.  Infantry, 

enroute  to  the  San  Carlos  Agency  to  enlist  a  com 
pany  of  Apache  Indians  for  his  regiment,  was  one 
of  the  finest  specimens  of  physical  manhood  it  has 
been  my  fortune  to  meet.  West  Point  turns  out 
many  such,  manly,  brave,  vigorous,  young  fellows, 
as  well  equipped  in  mind  as  in  body.  What  is 
more  beautiful  than  youth?  When  to  the  graces 
of  person  are  added  those  charms  of  easy  self-pos 
session  acquired  by  mental  discipline,  aided,  per- 


haps,  by  travel  at  home  and  abroad.  Then  too, 
these  young  officers,  whose  future  is  assured  so  far 
as  this  life  is  concerned,  show  a  freedom  from  the 
care  and  anxiety  that  so  early  furrows  the  brows  of 
the  young  men  in  civil  life.  Well  fed,  well  clothed, 
an  honorable  and  honored  profession,  an  education 
which,  so  far  as  the  practical  phase  of  life  is  con 
cerned,  is  not  furnished  by  the  best  colleges  of  our 
land.  Necessarily  sound  in  body,  they  come  from 
West  Point  to  enter  the  duties  of  life,  endowed 
with  all  that  the  wealth  of  this  great  Nation  can 
give  them.  And  the  lieutenant,  this  bright  morn 
ing,  full  of  life,  was  the  center  of  attraction  to 
more  than  myself.  There  is  a  contagion  of  the 
sunshine  of  youth,  and  I  pity  one  who  does  not 
seek  to  warm  himself  in  its  rays.  Of  a  genial  dis 
position,  attractive  person,  and  interesting  talker, 
the  lieutenant's  hearty  laugh  now  and  then  rang 
through  the  car,  causing  an  approving  smile  from 
those  even  too  remote  to  catch  the  volley  of  wit 
that  provoked  it.  God  bless  you,  lieutenant,  with 
all  your  wealth  of  health,  life  and  spirits.  May 
that  life  long  be  spared  from  the  treacherous 
Apaches'  rifle,  or  the  Sioux  hunting  knife.  That 
life  carries  not  only  enjoyment  to  its  owner,  but  to 
all  those  with  whom  it  comes  in  contact. 

At  the  further  end  of  the  car  sits  another  young 
man.  He  occupies  two  seats,  with  his  attendant. 
His  cheeks  are  sunken,  his  eyes  are  large  and  bril 
liant  with  fever's  consuming  fire.  His  hands  are 
like  skeletons,  while  his  sunken  chest  heaves  with 
his  labored  breathings.  His  clothes  hang  loosely 
about  his  attenuated  form.  "How  are  you  feeling 
now?"  his  attendant  kindly  asked.  With  the  con 
sumptive's  never-failing  hope,  a  sickly  smile  passes 


over  his  wan  features.  "Better  this  morning,  lots 
better;  I  will  be  riding  a  broncho  in  less  than  two 
weeks." 

At  Deming,  we  lose  the  lieutenant.  El  Paso  is 
reached  at  noon.  The  far-gone  sufferer  is  taken  to 
the  Grand  Central  Hotel.  We  go  to  one  directly 
across  the  Plaza.  The  shades  of  night  fall,  and 
the  city  is  wrapped  in  slumber.  At  just  that  hour 
before  dawn,  when  sleep  secures  its  firmest  hold 
on  the  tired  traveller,  pistol  shots  rang  out  on  the 
still  morning  air.  We  jump  from  our  beds.  A 
lurid  glare  pervades  our  rooms.  We  rush  to  the 
window,  the  Grand  Central  Hotel  is  on  fire! 
Higher  and  higher  the  red  flames  leap  into  the 
darkness.  The  hotel  is  doomed;  may  not  ours 
be  in  danger?  Hastily  dressing,  we  run  down 
stairs.  Two  or  three  partly-dressed  and  excited 
guests  of  the  burning  hotel  are  seeking  protection 
in  ours.  What  is  coming?  One  bearing  a  burden 
on  his  shoulders.  We  open  the  door, — it  is  the 
consumptive  in  the  arms  of  his  faithful  attendant. 
Those  large  eyes  are  closed,  the  pale  face  is  now 
a  ghastly  hue,  the  breath  comes  in  short,  quick 
gasps.  Excitement  and  exposure  have  proved  too 
much.  He  is  carried  to  a  room,  and  a  physician 
is  sent  for,  but  the  sufferer  is  beyond  human  help. 

He  rode  his  horse  before  the  two  weeks  of  his 
morning's  prediction,  but  it  was  the  Pale  Horse 
we  all  must  sooner  or  later  ride. 


SUPERSTITION 


ADDRESS  by  Eliot  Callender,  de 
livered  May  26,  1901,  before  the 
Pentsemon  Cosmopolitan  Associa 
tion. 


[HEN  I  came  out  here  last  year  on  an 
invitation  to  enjoy  an  outing  with  the 
Pentsemon  Cosmopolitan  Association,  I 
was  interrupted  in  my  enjoyment  by  the 
information  that  I  had  been  nominated  for  His 
torian  for  the  year  1901.  Never  having  attended 
any  previous  meetings  of  the  Association,  I  had 
not  the  slightest  idea  of  what  the  Association  His 
torian  was  expected  to  do;  but  having  known  of 
some  very  poor  historians,  and  knowing  that  as  a 
Nation,  the  United  States  was  making  history 
pretty  rapidly,  I  thought  I  might  hold  down  the 
job  nominally,  if  not  creditably;  and  declaring  I 
I  "would  ne'er  consent,  consented." 

It  was  not  until  after  hearing  the  masterly  paper 
of  my  predecessor,  Judge  Worthington,  and  read 
ing  over  the  proceedings  of  previous  meetings  of 
the  Association,  that  the  truth  dawned  upon  me, 
that  your  Committee  on  Nomination,  in  their 
desperation  to  fill  out  this  year's  programme,  had 
thrown  a  poor  mortal  that  could  not  swim,  into 
water  over  his  head.  It  is  folly  to  suppose  that 
one  with  no  college  education,  a  business  man 
whose  hours  have  been  assiduously  devoted  to  the 
chase  of  the  elusive  dollar,  instead  of  books; 
whose  mind  is  untrained  and  unimproved,  with  no 
power  of  concentrating  thought;  I  say  it  is  simply 
folly  to  place  a  man  of  that  kind  in  a  place  like 
this,  and  expect  him  to  hold  his  own  with  pundits 
and  philosophers,  with  doctors  and  lawyers,  and 
editors,  who  think  for  a  living,  and  are  able 
through  their  advantages  and  accomplishments  to 
elevate  and  help  their  fellow  men.  I  have  had  no 
time  to  think,  excepting  of  the  times  when  I  have 


been  badly  left;  and  have  little  education,  except 
ing  that  which  my  eyes  and  ears  have  brought  me 
in  my  endeavors  to  keep  up  with  the  procession, 
and  so  far  as  possible,  to  secure  a  seat  in  the  "band 
wagon."  So  if  my  paper  this  afternoon  falls  short, 
as  it  certainly  will,  of  its  able  and  scholarly  pre 
decessors,  please  visit  your  disappointment  and 
indignation  on  the  Committee  who,  suffering  from 
sandwiches  taken  in  excess,  dragged  me  from  a 
happy  obscurity,  and  forced  me  to  advertise  my 
mental  poverty  and  threadbare  attainments. 

I  can  say,  however,  Brother  Philosophers,  that 
I  am  in  thorough  sympathy  with  the  principles  of 
this  Association,  so  far  as  its  love  of  nature  is  con 
cerned,  and  its  freedom  of  thought  and  expression. 
You  have  not  assembled  here  to  do  or  undo  each 
other;  you  can,  and  do  differ  with  your  associates, 
and  yet  respect  them  and  their  opinions.  To  be 
sure,  a  man  must  have  a  reason  for  the  faith  that 
is  in  him,  and  so  far  as  he  has  a  reason,  his  faith 
is  respected.  He  may  be  a  simple  searcher  after 
the  truth,  with  no  fixed  convictions,  and  as  such 
he  is  welcome  here.  Of  this  much  I  am  certain: 
that  no  man  whose  soul  ever  expanded  as  he  drank 
in  the  beauties  of  Nature,  no  man  who  ever  found 
delight  in  the  modest  violet  or  the  field  daisy,  who 
ever  looked  from  Nature  to  Nature's  God,  ever 
burned  his  fellow  man  at  the  stake  for  differences 
of  opinion,  or  gave  him  a  pass  to  perdition  with 
no  stop-overs. 

So,  "with  malice  toward  none  and  charity  for  all" 
and  the  desire  to  do  right  as  it  is  given  us  to  see  the 
right,  this  Association  will  go  on,  and  live  on,  so 
long  as  it  has  this  solid  foundation.  The  warm 
grasp  of  the  hand  is  a  better  religion  than  the  lip 


of  scorn  or  the  heart  of  hate,  and  he  is  but  reflect 
ing  the  ideal  of  a  Supreme  Ruler  of  the  universe 
whose  heart  and  hand  are  open  and  not  closed  to 
his  fellow  man.  I  believe  that  as  the  centuries 
roll  on,  they  are  rolling  on  to  a  realization  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man.  The  dark  ages  are  in  the 
past,  not  in  the  future.  Ignorance,  superstition, 
and  fanaticism,  are  great  clouds  which  the  strong 
sunlight  of  civilization  and  progress  is  dissipating; 
but  it  is  simply  astonishing  what  a  sunburst  it  will 
take  to  destroy  them;  but  truth  is  mighty  and  must 
prevail. 

I  propose  to  call  your  thoughts,  this  afternoon, 
to  an  octopus  that  has  ridden  the  world  from  its 
earliest  beginnings,  rides  it  to-day,  though  bom 
barded  by  the  intellects  of  the  ages;  its  fallacies 
shown  up,  still  it  lives  and  thrives,  and  so  far  as  I 
can  see,  always  will — so  long  as  man  is  fallible,  and 
our  knowledge  of  the  hereafter,  vague  and  un 
certain. 

Superstition,  like  a  shadow,  attends  the  king  on 
his  throne,  and  the  peasant  in  his  cottage.  It 
wraps  the  sailor  closer  than  his  peajacket,  on  every 
sea  and  in  every  clime.  It  absolutely  rules  the  un 
civilized  races  of  the  world,  and  makes  itself  felt 
in  the  daily  doings  of  the  400.  It  regulates  the 
time  and  details  of  the  marriage  service,  and  though 
we  bury  our  dead,  we  do  not  bury  the  shadow.  We 
draw  in  superstition  with  our  mother's  milk,  and 
though  reason  and  common  sense  arise  in  maturer 
years  and  rebel  against  it,  it  is  ever  present  with 
us,  an  unbidden  and  uncomfortable  ghost,  and  like 
Banquo's,  it  will  not  down.  Like  some  of  Dore's 
celebrated  pictures,  our  atmosphere  is  peopled  with 
uncertain  and  uncanny  forms,  more  or  less  vivid, 


as  our  imaginations  are  strong  or  weak.  Napoleon, 
himself  a  fatalist,  said  that  imagination  governs  the 
universe. 

Now  my  imagination  is  strong  enough  to  dis 
cern  in  my  audience,  more  than  one  knife  being 
whetted  to  cut  this  paper  up,  for  I  know  that  if 
there  is  anything  upon  which  this  Association  is  a 
unit,  it  is  its  enmity  to  superstition  in  any  and  every 
form.  Nearly  every  Historian  who  has  appeared 
before  you,  has  thrown  his  lance  at  it,  and  since  it 
seems  to  have  no  friends,  I  present  it  to  you  for 
another  fusilade,  and  as  like  as  not, its  most  doughty 
assailant  will  be  found  with  a  buckeye  in  his  pocket 
to  ward  off  rheumatism,  or  a  coin  that  he  has  carried 
for  a  lucky-piece  for  years. 

If  superstition  is  a  mental  disease,  it  is  heredi 
tary,  and  very  few  have  entirely  escaped  the  in 
heritance.  Whittier  says:  "There  is  scarcely  a 
superstition  of  the  past  three  centuries  which  has 
not  at  this  very  time,  more  or  less  hold  upon  in 
dividual  minds  among  us."  Is  this  true?  Take 
up  your  daily  paper  and  note  the  advertisements 
of  soothsayers,  clairvoyants,  and  palmists,  who 
offer  to  unfold  the  mysteries  of  the  future  for  a 
dollar  and  upwards;  and  do  you  think  that  the 
clientage  of  these  necromancers  consists  of  servant 
girls  and  the  ignorant  classes  in  the  community 
alone?  It  would,  in  my  opinion,  be  something 
startling,  if  a  list  of  those  who  have  paid  a  dollar 
and  upwards,  was  also  published.  It  would  include 
business  men  seeking  a  solution  of  their  troubles; 
husbands  and  wives,  separate  and  apart,  however, 
anxious  to  know  if  there  was  no  God  in  Israel; 
and  lovers,  anxious  to  read  the  answer  to  their 
hopes  in  the  stars.  My  lady  in  the  brown-stone 


front  is  no  stranger  in  these  places,  which  reap  a 
rich  harvest  from  the  credulity  and  superstitions 
of  the  community.  Many  a  merry  dinner  party 
has  been  thrown  into  consternation  when  the  ab 
sence  of  a  guest  was  found  to  leave  the  fated 
thirteen  to  gather  around  the  festal  board,  and  I 
do  not  believe  there  is  a  lady  in  the  city  of  Peoria 
that  would  brave  this  superstition  willingly.  I 
know  of  prominent  and  intelligent  men  in  this  city, 
who  pass  a  month  in  more  or  less  dread  and  fear, 
if,  perchance,  they  were  so  unfortunate  as  to  catch 
the  first  glimpse  of  the  new  moon  over  their  left 
shoulder.  The  farmer's  wife,  practical  and  sensi 
ble,  as  a  class  firmly  holds  to  the  right  or  wrong 
time  of  the  moon  in  which  to  plant  her  vegetables. 
Boys  still  whistle  in  passing  graveyards  by  night, 
and  haunted  houses  are  found  in  every  town. 

No  ocean  liner  sails  on  Friday.  The  Chicago 
Post  of  January  loth,  says:  "  'Twas  a  Friday  night 
when  we  set  sail."  Those  who  recall  the  lines  of 
this  nautical  ditty,  will  remember  that  the  gallant 
ship  did  a  sort  of  merry-go-round  on  the  foaming 
billows,  and  then  sank  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea, 
thus  ending  the  voyage  which  began  so  merrily, 
near  the  close  of  a  luckless  day.  The  song  is  old, 
but  not  so  old  as  the  sailors'  superstition  that 
"Davy  Jones'  locker"  is  the  most  likely  port  of 
any  vessel  which  flies  in  the  face  of  fate  by  begin 
ning  a  voyage  on  a  Friday.  It  is  difficult  to  find 
a  sailor  who  would  willingly  embark  in  such  a  ship, 
even  to-day,  and  the  Navy  Department,  only  last 
January,  has  given  proof  that  the  superstition  has 
life  enough  left  to  influence  prosaic  Government 
officials.  It  was  determined  sometime  previous, 
that  the  new  battleship  "Wisconsin,"  then  near- 


ing  completion,  should  be  placed  in  commission 
February  ist.  Old  salts  examined  the  calendar, 
and  their  blood  chilled  when  they  saw  that  this 
date  fell  on  Friday.  They  never  heard  of  a  battle 
ship  that  was  reckless  enough  to  go  into  active 
commission  Friday,  and  they  did  not  believe  that 
human  skill  could  construct  a  craft  strong  enough 
to  thus  presumptiously  sail  into  the  teeth  of  dis 
aster.  Their  expert  opinions  reached  the  ears  of 
the  Department  at  Washington,  and  an  order  was 
issued  that  the  "Wisconsin"  be  put  into  commission 
February  4th,  Monday. 

Superstition  dies  hard,  if  it  ever  dies  at  all. 
Those  who  went  down  to  sea  in  ships  centuries 
ago,  believed  Friday  a  day  fraught  with  ill  luck, 
and  sailors  are  equally  afraid  of  it  to-day;  and  it 
is  the  well-established  policy  of  the  United  States 
Navy  Department,  to  respect  this  hoary  supersti 
tion,  since  it  cannot  well  get  along  without  sea 
men.  Having  spent  three  years  of  my  life  with 
Jack  Tar,  I  could  fill  out  this  day  with  the  super 
stitions  of  the  sea.  There  is  but  a  plank  between 
the  sailor  and  Eternity,  and  every  incident  is 
clothed  by  him  with  portent  for  good  or  evil. 
His  life  and  actions  are  controlled  and  guided  by 
signs  in  which  he  puts  more  faith  than  he  does  all 
the  preaching  and  the  science  of  the  world.  Let 
me  narrate  one  instance  which  came  under  my  per 
sonal  experience:  One  day  in  January,  1862,  seven 
hundred  and  fifty  men  were  seated  on  the  stones 
of  the  levee  at  Cairo  in  five  groups  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  each.  Tied  up  to  the  levee,  side  by  side 
in  front  of  them,  were  five  ironclad  gunboats,  built 
by  James  B.  Eads — the  "Cairo,"  "Cincinnati," 
"St.  Louis,"  "Louisville,"  and  "Pittsburgh  One 


hundred  and  fifty  men  were  the  quota  assigned  to 
each  boat.  These  men  were  awaiting  their  respect 
ive  assignments,  and  while  we  were  sitting  there, 
some  one  cried,  "Look  there,"  which  was  picked 
up  by  another  and  another,  until  a  hundred  voices 
were  raised,  and  as  many  fingers  pointing  at  the 
gunboat  "Cairo."  The  cause  of  all  this  excite 
ment  was  two  large  rats  which  were  leaving  the 
boat  and  running  along  the  great  hawser  which 
moored  her  to  the  shore.  There  was  nothing  sur 
prising  in  this  to  me,  but  I  saw  many  heads  shake 
and  heard  many  mutterings.  But  the  matter  be 
came  much  plainer  when  the  one  hundred  and  fifty 
men  were  tallied  off  to  go  on  the  "Cairo,"  and  to 
a  man  they  refused  to  go.  The  Jacks  believe  that 
rats  desert  a  sinking  ship,  and  these  men  carried 
their  refusal  to  be  assigned  to  the  "Cairo,"  to  the 
point  of  being  put  under  arrest  and  taken  back  to 
the  receiving  ship.  Some  said  they  might  as  well 
die  right  there,  as  to  die  aboard  that  boat,  and  her 
crew  was  afterwards  made  up  of  landsmen,  some 
of  which,  I  believe,  were  obtained  from  the  army. 
Inside  of  a  year,  the  "Cairo,"  under  command  of 
Lieutenant  Thos.  O.  Selfridge  (now  retired  Ad 
miral),  in  an  expedition  up  the  Yazoo  River,  ran 
onto  a  torpedo,  was  blown  up  and  sunk,  with  a 
large  loss  of  life.  None  of  the  regular  sailors  in 
the  Mississippi  Squadron,  of  which  there  were  two 
or  three  thousand,  were  a  bit  surprised — their  only 
wonder  was  that  the  "Cairo"  had  lasted  so  long. 

A  sailor  will  sing,  but  he  will  never  whistle.  I 
had  acquired  the  whistling  habit  before  entering 
the  service,  but  when  I  was  assured  that  I  would 
be  thrown  overboard,  if  I  did  not  make  a  radical 
change,  I  discontinued  it. 


Every  railroad  man  will  tell  you  that  travel  in 
variably  falls  off  on  Friday  in  the  most  marked 
manner.  The  Pullman  Palace  Car  Company  re 
port  less  reservations  on  that  day  than  any  day  of 
the  week.  Every  railroad  company  has  one  or  two 
engines  that  it  is  difficult  to  keep  a  crew  on,  be 
ing  considered  unlucky;  and  engines  unfortunate 
enough  to  have  been  in  disasters,  have  been  rebuilt 
and  different  numbers  given  them,  hoping  to  de 
stroy  their  identity  with  misfortune. 

Note  any  day,  as  a  funeral  procession  passes  up 
Perry  Avenue,  those  waiting  on  the  corners  till 
the  last  vehicle  has  gone  by,  before  crossing  the 
street,  and  that  too,  no  matter  how  wide  the  break 
between  the  vehicles,  or  how  much  the  need  of 
haste  by  the  pedestrian.  Do  you  say  that  is  out 
of  respect  for  the  dead,  or  from  the  universal  be 
lief  that  it  is  unlucky  to  cross  a  funeral?  No  lover, 
however  absorbed  in  his  fair  one,  would  dare  to  give 
her  that  most  beautiful  of  gems — the  emerald — for 
her  engagement  ring,  and  the  opal  is  shunned  as 
the  incarnation  of  disaster  and  grief.  No  young 
couple  is  properly  started  out  in  life  without  a 
bombardment  of  old  shoes  and  a  shower  of  rice. 
When  the  present  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Albany 
left  Windsor  Castle,  the  Princesses  Louise  and 
Beatrice  opened  up  a  fusilade  of  ancient  footwear, 
one  of  which  the  Duke  caught  on  the  fly,  and 
with  a  well-directed  shot,  landed  it  on  the  august 
person  of  the  Duke  of  Edinborough.  Tennyson 
says,  "And  whereso'er  thou  move,  good  luck  shall 
throw  her  old  shoe  after."  The  wedding  ring  is 
born  of  an  old  superstition,  and  was  fiercely  fought 
by  our  Puritan  fathers  as  a  "circle  for  the  devil  to 
dance  in."  The  fair  hand  that  Priscilla  gave  to 


John  Alden,  she  would  not  have  had  encircled  by 
a  ring  for  worlds,  and  yet  her  people  could  thank 
God,  as  some  poor  soul  accused  of  witchcraft  went 
up  in  flames  and  smoke  at  the  stake. 

Thousands  are  yet  careful  to  get  out  of  bed  with 
the  right  foot  first,  and  an  ill-humored  man  will 
have  the  remark  flung  at  him  that  "he  must  have 
got  out  of  bed,  wrong  foot  foremost." 

The  term  "Hoodoo"  was  unknown  in  the 
Northern  States  twenty  years  ago,  but  has  now 
passed  into  general  use.  We  speak  of  an  ill- 
starred  concern  or  person  as  hoodooed;  the  belief 
that  this  is  so,  is  well-nigh  universal  and  comes 
very  near  to  a  belief  in  witchcraft,  for  which  we  so 
condemn  our  pious  Puritan  fathers.  Josh  Billings 
says  that  "when  a  man  starts  to  go  down  hill,  it 
seems  as  if  everything  is  greased  for  the  occasion." 
The  sporting  fraternity  is  notoriously  addicted  to 
this  superstition.  The  steamship  "Rio  Janiero" 
that  sank  just  outside  the  Golden  Gate  at  San 
Francisco  February  22nd  last,  with  such  a  fearful 
loss  of  life,  including  Consul  Wildeman  and  his 
family,  had  long  been  recognized  as  a  hoodooed 
ship,  having  met  with  a  number  of  mishaps,  and 
was  avoided  by  those  seeking  employment  at  San 
Francisco.  This  largely  accounts  for  the  Chinese 
crew  she  carried.  As  the  hoodoo  is  avoided,  the 
mascot  is  welcomed.  If  any  vessel  in  the  United 
States  Navy  is  without  some  animal  holding  down 
this  responsible  position,  it  is  because  it  has  not 
been  able  to  procure  one.  And  along  this  line, 
comes  the  practice  indulged  in  by  more  than  we 
think,  of  wearing  charms  and  amulets  to  ward  off 
evil.  This  practice  undoubtedly  came  down  to  us 
from  fortune-tellers  and  gypsies  who  trafficked  in 


charms,  but  amulets  early  passed  into  the  Christian 
Church,  and  were  well  known  among  the  Egypt 
ians,  Greeks,  and  Romans.  In  the  early  church, 
the  making  and  selling  of  amulets  was  a  prosper 
ous  business,  and  to-day  the  wearing  of  these 
charms  is  well  nigh  universal  in  Central  Asia  and 
Western  and  Southern  Europe.  Coins  marked 
with  a  cross  seem  to  be  the  favorite.  Conseulo 
Vanderbilt,  the  young  Duchess  of  Marlboro,  at 
tributes  no  small  amount  of  her  married  content 
to  a  little  heart  of  gold  she  ordered  made  and  cut 
half  in  two.  The  day  before  the  wedding,  one 
half  of  the  heart  was  given  her  betrothed,  the 
other  half  she  hung  around  her  neck  by  a  fine 
gold  chain,  and  from  that  day,  the  young  couple 
have  worn  their  portions  of  the  gold  emblem,  in 
the  belief  that  to  lose  or  mislay  one  of  the  parts 
would  bring  them  dire  distress. 

The  late  King  Humbert  of  Italy  believed  be 
fore  all  things  else,  in  the  bezoar  stone  that  wards 
off  the  evil  eyes ;  the  bezoar  stone  is  a  very  rare 
growth  obtained  from  certain  mountain  animals, 
and  he  wore  three  such  stones  "that  change  color 
with  the  stars  "  in  his  welded,  irremovable  bracelet. 
Along  this  same  line  is  the  common  habit  of  carry 
ing  so-called  lucky  pieces,  in  the  shape  of  a  coin 
or  token;  and  the  horseshoe  nailed  over  the  door 
or  on  the  wall.  Nelson  went  into  the  battle  of 
Trafalgar  with  a  horseshoe  nailed  to  the  bow  of 
the  "Victory."  The  superstition  surrounding  the 
horseshoe  is  as  old  as  the  horse  itself,  and  crops 
out  in  the  literature  of  all  Ages.  In  Gay's  fable 
of  the  "Old  Woman  and  Her  Cats,"  the  witch 
laments — 


«'  Straws  laid  across,  my  path  retard, 

The  horseshoes  nailed,  each  threshold  guard." 

Butler  declares  that — 

"  Evil  spirits  are  chased  away,  by  dint 
Of  sickle,  horseshoe,  hollow  flint." 

We  find  the  horseshoe  stamped  on  monograms, 
Christmas  cards,  book  covers;  we  find  them  in 
gold,  silver,  and  precious  stones  in  every  jewelry 
store.  The  wassail  or  loving  cup  is  another  relic 
of  superstition  which  has  come  down  to  us  from 
the  Mediaeval  Ages,  and  the  common  "Here's  to 
you,"  which  I  have  heard  this  very  day  on  these 
enchanted  grounds,  is  nothing  more  than  an  in 
vocation  to  good  luck. 

Within  the  past  two  years,  a  genius  in  New 
England  prepared  and  advertised  a  so-called 
"Lucky  Box,"  which  could  easily  be  carried  in 
the  pocket,  and  the  possession  of  which  would 
bring  instant  luck.  Thousands  upon  thousands 
were  sold  in  the  Eastern  States,  and  they  would 
still  be  selling,  if  the  Government  had  not  stamped 
them  as  a  fraud  and  prohibited  their  transmission 
in  the  mails.  Heartsease,  the  common  name  given 
to  the  whole  violet  family,  comes  from  the  old 
superstition  that  roots  and  flowers  were  a  prevent 
ive  of  anger,  and  brought  peace  and  comfort  to 
the  heart.  An  ancient  myth  is  perpetuated  in  half 
the  households  in  the  land,  in  the  holly  and  ever 
green  decorations  so  bountifully  used  at  Christmas 
time.  Our  Puritan  fathers  inveighed  mightily 
against  this  custom,  and  hurled  anathemas  dark 
and  dire  at  it;  but  to  what  avail,  each  recurring 
Christmastide  attests. 

Buckeyes  and  potatoes  are  carried  to  cure  or 
prevent  rheumatism.  The  mad-stone  for  the  cure 


of  hydrophobia  has  its  hosts  of  firm  believers. 
President  Lincoln  carried  Robert  a  journey  of 
over  a  hundred  miles,  that  this  stone  might  exer 
cise  its  virtue  on  a  dog  bite,  and  I  might  say,  in 
this  connection,  that  this  great-hearted,  whole- 
souled,  practical  man,  who  kept  in  such  close 
touch  with  the  heart  and  love  of  his  people,  had 
a  deeply  superstitious  nature.  He  was  ever  see 
ing  good  or  evil  omens,  and  was  a  firm  believer  in 
the  saying  that  "coming  events  cast  their  shadows 
before  them."  After  his  election  to  the  Presidency, 
and  before  leaving  Springfield,  he  awoke  from  an 
afternoon  nap  in  his  bedroom,  and  saw  his  face  re 
flected  in  duplicate  in  a  mirror  on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  room;  one  of  the  faces  was  quite  distinct 
and  natural,  the  other  more  indistinct  and  pale  and 
haggard.  It  made  a  profound  impression  on  his 
mystical  nature,  which  was  intensified  by  the 
phenomenon  being  repeated  a  few  days  later.  He 
never  laid  on  that  lounge  without  apprehension. 
He  conversed  with  many  about  the  occurrence,  and 
it  was  interpreted  by  his  wife  as  indicating  that  he 
would  be  twice  elected  President  of  the  United 
States,  and  that  his  second  term  meant  sorrow,  and 
likely  death.  It  is  well  authenticated  that  he 
dreamed  of  his  own  funeral  ten  days  before  his 
death,  for  he  spoke  of  it  to  several  members  of 
his  Cabinet.  The  disaster  of  Bull  Run  occurring 
on  Sunday,  he  used  his  best  efforts  to  prevent  a 
battle  on  that  day  during  the  entire  war.  He 
telegraphed  Mrs.  Lincoln  at  Philadelphia,  to  keep 
a  close  watch  on  Tad,  as  he  had  had  a  bad  dream 
about  him. 

Major  General  Hancock,  who  could  face  death 
on  the  field  of  battle  without  a  tremor,  believed  in 


presentiments.  Attending  a  dinner  given  in  his 
honor  by  some  friends,  he  remarked  to  a  comrade, 
as  took  his  seat,  that  he  believed  that  would  be  the 
last  time  he  would  see  him;  a  Nation  mourned  his 
death  a  short  time  after.  Marie  Antoinnette  said: 
"At  my  wedding,  something  whispered  to  me  that 
I  was  signing  my  death  warrant;  at  the  last  mo 
ment  I  would  have  retreated,  if  I  could  have  done 
so."  Whittier  relates  a  number  of  striking  in 
stances  of  the  fulfillment  of  presentiments  that 
had  come  under  his  own  observation. 

Another  superstition  which  has  come  down  to 
us  from  ages  too- remote  for  dates,  is  the  divining 
rod;  in  every  community,  in  almost  every  land, 
can  be  found  the  seer  who,  with  his  forked  branch 
of  witch  hazel  or  mountian  ash  or  apple  twig, 
claims  to  be  able  to  locate  running  water  beneath 
the  earth's  surface.  Only  a  few  weeks  ago,  our 
papers  recounted  the  wonderful  achievements  of  a 
boy  residing  in  the  arid  portion  of  Texas,  who 
located  wells  with  such  unerring  accuracy,  that  he 
was  finally  taken  in  charge  by  a  manager  and  was 
rapidly  earning  a  fortune  by  his  gift.  This  divin 
ing  rod  will  not  work  for  everyone;  the  skeptic, 
who  can  figure  out  no  possible  relationship  between 
the  twig  and  the  \vater,may  spare  himself  the  trouble 
of  trying  the  experiment,  but  as  stated  before,  the 
belief  has  its  roots  beyond  the  reckoning  of  time. 
It  is  used  to-day  to  locate  oil  wells  in  Pennsylvania, 
and  gold  mines  in  the  Rockies.  It  is  used  in 
France  to  detect  criminals,  and  was  used  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  to  discover 
hidden  treasures.  As  we  go  farther  back,  we  find 
its  powers  still  further  enlarged,  even  to  the  power 
of  splitting  and  breaking  rocks.  Tradition  has  it, 


that  Solomon's  temple,  which  the  Good  Book  tells 
us  was  built  "without  sound  of  hammer  or  axe  or 
any  tool  of  iron,"  had  its  great  stones  prepared  in 
this  way.  The  Romans  used  the  plant  we  know 
as  sassafras,  for  this  divination,  hence  its  Latin 
name  Saxifrage  or  stonebreaker.  I  infer  the  work 
ings  of  Planchette,  which  created  such  a  furore 
twenty  years  ago,  may  be  placed  in  the  same  class 
as  the  divining  rod.  Many  of  our  best  educated 
and  most  intelligent  people  became  completely 
mystified  by  this  toy. 

And  now  we  come  to  a  section  of  the  subject  of 
our  thought,  this  afternoon,  that  tends  to  make  us 
say  with  Hamlet:  "There  are  more  things  in 
heaven  and  earth,  Horatio,  than  are  dreamed  of 
in  your  philosophy."  A  class  of  subjects  so  well 
authenticated,  with  such  a  weight  of  well-attested 
proof,  that  we  at  least  are  forced  to  say  that  science 
has  not  yet  exhausted  all  attainable  knowledge 
about  the  constitution  of  man.  There  are  either 
invisible  spirits  about  us,  or  man  has  mental  powers 
not  yet  fully  recognized.  This  brings  us  into 
spiritualism,  hypnotism,  mesmerism,  mindreading, 
thought  transference,  ghosts,  wraiths,  evil  eye, 
satanism,  and  the  whole  brood  of  dark  and  mys 
terious  subjects  that  have  challenged  the  thought 
and  worked  on  the  fears  of  mankind.  As  Drake 
says:  "Who  will  undertake  to  span  the  gulf 
stretching  out,  a  shoreless  void  between  the  revela 
tions  of  science  and  the  incomprehensible  mys 
teries  of  life  itself?  It  is  upon  that  debatable 
ground  that  superstition  finds  its  strongest  foot 
hold,  and  like  the  ivy  clinging  around  old  walls, 
defies  every  attempt  to  uproot  it."  Psychology  is 
yet  a  shoreless  and  uncharted  sea,  but  the  best 


minds  in  the  world  are  at  work  to-day  in  an  effort 
to  bound  and  sound  it.  I  believe  we  are  on  the 
brink  of  great  discoveries  in  this  science,  and  that 
there  are  those  in  my  audience  who  will  live  to  see 
and  understand  phenomena  that  have  terrified  the 
Ages.  We  do  not  carry  the  burdens  that  our  fore 
fathers  did;  education,  knowledge,  and  science 
have  dispelled  much  of  the  darkness,  but  there  are 
plenty  of  clouds  yet  to  be  dissipated,  and  as  I  de 
sire  to  confine  this  paper  to  the  superstitions  of  the 
day,  I  will  not  touch  on  the  mass  of  material,  in 
teresting  as  it  is,  that  fills  the  pages  of  history;  we 
have  enough  in  our  own  day  and  generation. 

On  December  28th  last,  a  dispatch  was  sent 
from  London  to  the  Associated  Press,  and  was 
published  in  our  papers,  to  the  effect  that  the 
ghost  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scotts  had  been  heard 
in  the  Tower  of  London,  wailing  and  mourning, 
on  Christmas  night.  The  Tower  Guard  who 
heard  it,  called  an  officer;  they  both  heard  it,  and 
procuring  keys,  opened  the  room  in  the  tower 
where  Mary  had  been  confined,  but  could  see  or 
hear  nothing.  It  is  a  matter  of  record  that  this 
ghostly  wail  has  been  heard  just  before  the  death 
of  every  English  Sovereign  from  Queen  Eliza 
beth's  time  down.  This  dispatch  goes  on  to  say 
that  the  event  was  causing  great  apprehension,  and 
that  every  effort  was  being  made  to  keep  it  from 
coming  to  Queen  Victoria's  notice,  as  the  Queen 
was  very  much  depressed  over  the  recent  death  of 
Lady  Churchill,  her  most  intimate  friend.  Noth 
ing  had  gone  out  to  the  world  at  that  time  that 
Queen  Victoria  was  not  in  her  usual  state  of  health, 
beyond  the  one,  that  the  South  African  War  had 
borne  pretty  heavily  on  her.  Many  of  our  dailies 


commented  on  this  London  dispatch  at  the  time, 
and  again,  when  within  thirty  days,  the  world 
mourned  the  demise  of  this  great  and  good  Queen. 

For  two  hundred  years  Fyvie  Castle,  adjoining 
the  Carnegie  Estates  in  Scotland,  has  been  under  a 
curse  which  falls  on  the  eldest  son  of  the  owner  of 
the  property.  This  curse  has  its  origin  from  the 
fact  that  the  castle  was  built  with  the  stones  of  a 
wrecked  Catholic  Abbey.  No  eldest  son  has  ever 
fallen  heir  to  the  property,  and  in  fact  no  male  heir 
has  survived  to  enjoy  the  estate.  It  was  long  the 
property  of  the  Earls  of  Dumfermline,  whose  sons 
all  died,  then  passed  to  the  Gordons,  who  were 
similarly  stricken.  Sir  Maurice  Duff  Gordon, 
who  had  only  a  daughter  left,  sold  it  to  A.  J. 
Forbes  Leith  (Carnegie's  partner),  who  married 
Miss  Mary  January  of  St.  Louis,  a  friend  of  my 
boyhood  days.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Forbes  Leith  are 
now  mourning  the  loss  of  their  only  son,  Lieut 
enant  Perry  Forbes  Leith  of  the  First  Royal 
Dragoon  Guards,  one  of  the  victims  of  the  South 
African  War,  and  the  curse  still  broods  over  Fyvie 
Castle.  But  Mary  Stuart's  ghost  is  not  the  only 
one  manifesting  a  pernicious  activity,  nor  Fyvie 
Castle  the  only  curse-ridden  domain.  Scarcely  a 
city  in  the  United  States,  without  its  haunted 
houses,  and  you  will  not  read  your  daily  papers 
one  week  without  coming  across  the  account  of  a 
ghostly  visitor,  certified  and  sworn  to  by  witnesses 
of  accepted  credibility. 

Since  starting  to  prepare  this  paper,  I  have  clip 
pings  from  the  Topeka,  Kansas,  Capital;  St.  Louis 
Post-Despatch;  Helena,  Montana,  Record;  Ot- 
tumwa,  Iowa,  Courier;  Chicago  Post,  and  Peoria 
Star,  giving  accounts  of  apparitions,  dates  of  the 


occurrences,  and  the  names  and  addresses  of  the 
witnesses.  These  visitations  occurred  in  Emporia, 
Kansas;  Mascoutah,  Illinois;  Ottumwa,  Iowa; 
Cincinnati,  Ohio;  Geneva,  New  York;  Berlin, 
Pennsylvania,  and  Querendaro,  Mexico.  One  of 
these  papers  states  that  "Someone  in  a  facetious 
vein  has  remarked,  that  men  may  lose  faith  in  their 
fellow  men,  in  their  religion,  in  their  doctors,  but 
somewhere  in  their  natures  will  cling  a  hidden, 
sneaking  half-belief  in  the  possibility  of  ghosts." 
And  the  newspapers  of  the  day  bear  witness  that 
ghost  stories  are  in  the  category  of  news;  they  are 
printed  with  no  apology,  and  are  told  in  detail, 
just  as  any  flesh  and  blood  circumstance  is  related. 
One  of  these  papers  states  that  within  the  period 
of  ten  days,  the  ghost  stories  told  by  metropolitan 
papers  have  averaged  more  than  1,500  words  in 
length.  The  vehicles  of  these  stories  have  ranged 
from  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  in  London,  down  to 
the  Owosso,  Michigan,  Argus,  and  not  one  of 
these  publications  has  attempted  to  apologize  for 
giving  space  to  such  subjects.  In  fact,  the  accounts 
state  that  in  several  instances  the  majesty  of  the 
law  had  been  invoked  for  the  protection  of  those 
who  had  seen  the  spooks,  or  felt  their  influences. 
Are  those  accounts  all  impositions,  and  the  so- 
stated  witnesses,  myths  or  liars?  Camille  Flam- 
marion,  the  French  savant,  states:  "There  is  no 
longer  any  room  to  doubt  the  fact  that  certain 
houses  are  haunted.  I  began  the  scientific  study 
of  these  questions  on  November  I5th,  1861,  and 
I  have  continued  it  ever  since;  I  have  received 
more  than  four  thousand  letters  upon  these  ques 
tions  from  learned  men  of  every  land,  and  I  am 
glad  to  be  able  to  say  that  some  of  the  most  in- 


teresting  letters  come  from  America."  Flamma- 
rion  is  an  avowed  spiritualist.  Only  recently,  the 
Rev.  M.  J.  Savage,  the  popular  pastor  of  the 
largest  Unitarian  Church  in  Boston,  announced 
his  conversion  to  spiritualism.  Our  own  Robert 
J.  Ingersol  spent  several  years  in  this  belief,  and 
while  nearly  all  of  the  leading  professional  mediums 
have  been  detected  in  fraud,  the  power  manifested 
by  even  amateur  mediums  has  been  beyond  expla 
nation  by  any  known  laws  of  Nature,  or  discov 
eries  of  science.  So-called  messages  from  the  dead 
have  stated  facts  which  could  not  possibly  have 
been  known  to  the  medium,  or  to  anyone  living, 
beyond  the  person  who  had  called  in  the  medium's 
services.  A  writer  in  a  Manitoba  paper  says: 
"The  facts  of  hypnotism  are  familiar  to  all  now- 
a-days;  Mesmerism  was  explained  a  hundred 
years  ago  as  animal  magnetism,  but  this  theory 
falls  to  the  ground,  when  it  becomes  known  that 
the  mesmeric  or  hypnotic  sleep,  with  all  its  pecu 
liarities  of  hallucination  and  of  submission  to  the 
will,  can  be  created  in  a  variety  of  mechanical 
ways.  It  has  also  been  proved  beyond  question, 
that  the  mind  of  the  hypnotic  patient  can  be  in 
fluenced  to  affect  the  body,  and  at  least  in  nervous 
or  hysterical  diseases,  to  exercise  a  healing  influ 
ence.  It  may  be  right  here  that  light  is  breaking 
in  on  many  of  the  witchcraft  stories,  and  of  the 
marvellous  healings  and  hallucinations  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  but  it  does 
not  explain  the  spirit  rappings  and  other  spiritual 
istic  manifestations  that  swept  over  the  civilized 
world  during  the  third  quarter  of  the  last  century. 
These  phenomena  caused  the  organization  in  1880 
of  the  well-known  "Society  of  Psychical  Research." 


Amongst  the  founders  of  this  Society  were  such 
scholars  as  Sir  William  Crooke;  Prof.  Balfour 
Stewart,  Prof.  Oliver  Lodge,  the  late  distinguished 
electrician;  Prof.  Hertz;  Lord  Tennyson;  Mr. 
A.  J.  Balfour,  the  present  leader  of  the  House  of 
Commons;  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  many  other  Eng 
lish  and  Continental  savants.  The  object  of  this 
Society  was  to  collect  and  investigate  first  hand 
evidence  for  the  alleged  phenomena  called  ghosts, 
wraiths,  haunted  houses,  clairvoyants,  premoni 
tions,  spiritualistic  disturbances,  etc.  This  Society 
felt  that  the  time  had  come  for  a  systematic, 
thorough,  and  conservative  study  and  investiga 
tion  of  this  whole  subject,  and  the  result  of  their 
labors  has  been  published  in  two  large  volumes 
called  "Phantasms  of  the  Living."  Over  seven 
teen  thousand  cases  were  critically  examined,  and 
all  available  evidences  of  ghosts  of  the  dead,  or 
wraiths  of  the  living,  were  collected  and  subjected 
to  the  most  persistent  and  searching  investigation. 
Moreover,  many  experiments  were  made,  and  it 
was  established  that  thought  transference,  not  by 
any  recognized  channels  of  the  sense,  is  a  possi 
bility,  even  when  the  experimenters  are  not  in  the 
same  room;  that  the  mind  or  brain  of  a  person  in 
some  crisis,  particularly  in  the  approach  of  death, 
could  affect  by  visible,  audible,  or  other  manifest 
ations  of  various  kinds,  the  mind  or  brain  of  an 
other  person  at  a  distance.  But  then,  most  of  us, 
during  our  lives,  have  been  impressed  with  the 
presence  of  some  absent  person  who,  it  turned 
out,  had  been  in  neither  danger  nor  even  trouble. 
But  the  Society's  Committee  satisfied  themselves 
"that  the  death  hallucination  or  appearance  oc 
curred  440  per  cent,  in  excess  of  any  other,  and 


they  pronounced  that  between  deaths  and  appari 
tions  of  the  dying,  a  conviction  exists,  which  is 
not  due  to  chance  alone." 

Andrew  Lang,  who  has  spent  many  years  in 
psychical  research,  leans  strongly  to  the  belief  that 
any  knowledge  contributed  by  a  seeming  phantasm 
of  the  dead,  is  the  result  of  telepathy  from  a  liv 
ing  brain.  Thought  transference  is  proved  by  the 
deeds  of  mindreaders  like  Johnson  and  Bishop, 
who  locate  hidden  articles  known  only  to  the  party 
secreting  them.  "It  would  seem  that  these  inves 
tigations  advancing  from  experimental  thought 
transference  to  telepathy,  more  or  less  explain 
wraiths  or  shades  of  living  persons,  and  have  sug 
gested  a  theory  of  ghosts."  I  believe,  my  friends, 
that  the  dawn  of  the  day  is  already  here,  the  break 
ing  light  of  which,  will  dissipate  the  dark  clouds 
of  superstition,  which  have  hung  like  a  pall  over 
the  Ages.  There  is  probably  no  one  in  this  audi 
ence  that  has  actually  suffered  from  superstition, 
but  there  are  thousands  in  this  community,  and  in 
every  community,  that  do.  Addison  writes  two 
hundred  years  ago  in  the  Spectator:  "I  fell  into  a 
profound  contemplation  on  the  evils  that  attend 
these  superstitious  folies  of  mankind,  how  they 
subject  us  to  imaginary  afflictions  and  additional 
sorrows;  as  if  the  natural  calamities  of  life  were 
not  sufficient  for  it;  we  turn  the  most  indifferent 
circumstances  into  misfortunes."  There  was  a  time 
when  religion  and  superstition  were  synonymous 
terms.  Paul  says,  "Ye  men  of  Athens,  I  perceive 
that  in  all  things  ye  are  too  superstitious,"  mean 
ing,  as  I  take  it,  that  their  religion  had  run  riot 
with  them.  Superstition  has  been  a  blight  and  a 
curse,  and  to  a  large  extent  has  controlled  the 


happiness  and  peace  of  humanity.  The  super 
stitious  person  is  no  comfort  to  himself  or  anyone 
else.  He  is  no  apostle  of  cheer  and  light,  but 
lives  in  the  gloom  and  sees  little  else.  Supersti 
tion  blocks  the  way  of  progress,  and  holds  in  hope 
less  slavery  over  one-half  the  population  of  the 
world  to-day.  It  has  killed  and  tortured,  and  the 
wails  of  its  victims  call  to  God  for  vengeance. 
Dr.  Sprenger,  in  his  "Life  of  Mohammed,"  com 
putes  the  entire  number  of  persons  burned  as 
witches  during  the  Christian  Era,  at  nine  millions. 
Civilization  and  progress  are  indeed  marching  on, 
but  superstition  follows  like  a  shadow.  Science 
is  its  uncompromising  foe — the  St.  George  which 
will  slay  the  dragon,  if  it  ever  is  slain.  The  time 
has  indeed  gone  by  when  demons  were  heard  howl 
ing  in  the  gale,  or  lightning  looked  upon  as  a  shaft 
from  an  angry  God,  but  the  time  has  not  yet  come 
when  humanity  breathes  an  atmosphere  free  from 
the  miasma  of  superstition.  It  is  a  shadow  grow 
ing  fainter,  it  is  true,  that  follows  the  onward 
march  of  civilization  and  progress.  We  have 
lived  to  see  alchemy  grow  into  chemistry,  astrology 
merged  into  astronomy;  may  we  not  confidently 
look  forward  to  the  coming  of  the  truth  that  shall 
set  us  free? 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


JUN     9 

MAR  11 196*. 


Form  L-9-15ni-7,'32 


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